Lost items find new home in Ballantine

Freshman Hannah Wise was wandering around Ballantine Hall when she came across a sign that read “Lost and Found.” Wise walked down a small hallway to room 031, where she would hope to find her beloved black cardigan.

Ryan Jackson, a junior criminal justice major, was working in the lost and found for the first time Thursday when Wise stepped in. Jackson took some of her information, then attempted to look for the black sweater.

Jackson searched among nine garbage bags filled with clothes, but no black sweater could be found.

With a room full of lost belongings, most of them never claimed by their owners, Jackson’s search was not an easy one.

Jackson spends his days among two steel shelving units full of textbooks arranged by subject, more than 100 sets of keys hanging from a wall, laptops, phone chargers, bookbags, tennis rackets, baseball gloves, staplers, headphones, an old chess set and DVD copies of “Waterworld” and “Save the Last Dance.”

“When and where did you lose it?” Jackson said.

“I lost it in my calculus class here on Monday,” Wise said. “I switched teachers, so I don’t have class in that room anymore. But every time I try to go back to that classroom there’s a class in there.”

Although the lost and found is located in Ballantine Hall, the items there are not just from that building.

While other buildings have their own lost and founds, the Ballantine location acts as the mecca of all of them, where items are brought every day from different buildings around campus.

“I got a couple of calls from people who lost keys and a water bottle at the tailgating fields,” Jackson said. “It must have been a pretty good water bottle.”

Jackson works at the lost and found as a part of IU Police Department’s cadet program.

Through the program, cadets — usually sophomores and juniors — work shifts at the lost and found and provide security during games and at other various places on campus.

Lt. Craig Munroe has been in charge of the lost and found for the past five years, and he said he has noticed some trends.

“We usually get a lot of flash drives, keys and clothing,” Munroe said.

Although a steady stream of items comes in, they are almost never retrieved.

“Flash drives don’t get picked up that often,” Munroe said. “We usually stick them into a computer to see if they have anything with their name on it. If there is, we’ll e-mail the student. Even after e-mailing some though, they don’t come and get them.”

But this wasn’t the case for Wise, who said she will be sure to check back, just in case her sweater turns up.

“Hopefully it’ll show up,” Jackson said. “What you could do is try to e-mail the teacher you had. She might have picked it up and held onto it.”