When someone loses a personal item at Lafayette, they may believe it to be lost forever. Little might they know, however, that their item may have made its way to one of Public Safety’s lost and found bins. An ongoing initiative led by the Student Services committee of Student Government hopes to increase awareness about the lost and found bins and possibly change their locations.
Currently, there are three main lost and found bins: one in Skillman Library, one in the Allen P. Kirby Recreation Center and one in Lower Farinon.
According to Director of Public Safety Jeff Troxell, his department collects the contents of the bins in Skillman and the Recreation Center once a week, bringing their contents down to their office and categorizing them. The bin in Lower Farinon is collected on a monthly basis, Troxell said.
Students, faculty and staff can currently report lost items to Public Safety using the lost property form on their website. If the item is already in the possession of Public Safety or becomes so in the future, the owner will be notified and can pick up the item at the Public Safety Office at 901 Bushkill Drive. If someone finds a possible lost item, they can return it to a lost and found location for it to be stored by Public Safety, who will hold the item for up to three years before it is donated or disposed of.
Many students did not know about the bins.
“[It was] very small and didn’t stand out,” Lauren Karwacki ‘26 said of the lost and found bin in Lower Farinon. “I wouldn’t’ve known [it was] there.”
The lack of awareness surrounding the lost and found system is something that Kelsey Wong ‘25, director of the Student Government Student Services committee, is working to fix. Wong said that her committee is cooperating with Public Safety to change the pick-up location for lost items. Currently, students must go down to the Public Safety office – approximately a 10-minute walk from the Quad – to pick up the lost items.
“Most people won’t actually want to … go down the hill or go up the hill,” Wong said.
To encourage more frequent use of the system and prevent students from having to walk so far, Wong said she and her committee are trying to establish lost and found stations at a more central location on campus that would, in part, be controlled by Student Government.
“If [a student] reported something to be missing, then [Student Services] could look to see what we have, and after [some] amount of weeks we could give it to Public Safety,” Wong said.
While these changes could make the lost and found system more accessible, they are not without operational challenges. According to Troxell, one of the larger difficulties with changing the current system is staffing.
“If we were to get a new system [on campus] … someone would have to manage that,” he said.
Finding a new location that has enough space for the lost and found station presents another challenge.
Public Safety is supportive of making the lost and found system more efficient.
“We want to reconnect people with their lost items,” Troxell said.
With a more well-known, available system, Wong hopes that proper etiquette towards lost products would be established.