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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Campus becomes work of art in fall

Places of Fall

Twenty years have passed since the publication of architecture and design scholar Thomas Gaines’s “The Campus as a Work of Art.”

The piece dubbed IU-Bloomington’s campus the fifth most beautiful college campus in the United States.

While parts of campus have changed in the past two decades, IU continues to look after its artistic impression.

Behind IU’s 2,100 acres of land is Campus Division, the department responsible for the overall aesthetic of the grounds. Despite the uncharacteristically warm weather Bloomington has experienced the past couple weeks, the leaves continue to fall, keeping Campus Division busy.

“I have about 80 people, and I have a great group,” said Mike Girvin, manager of Campus Division. “They perform a necessary task at IU, and I’m proud to be their boss.”

Campus Division is comprised of nine crews, each with a specific area of expertise. There are crews dedicated to grounds aesthetic, nursery, trees, site construction and mechanics.

Tom McCammon, general supervisor of the Ballantine Hall crew, and seven others are responsible for maintaining the central part of campus, including Dunn Meadow, the Jordan River and the woods surrounding Ballantine Hall.

“We have a mighty big area, but I tell ya, I like it,” McCammon said.

The key to the job, McCammon said, is flexibility. Though some areas are constants — such as trash pick-up — the work changes daily.

Sometimes, it includes mulching and weeding flower beds. Other times, it involves mowing grass, pruning bushes, shoveling snow and, this time of year, raking the leaves.

“We’re getting into leaf season, which is a very busy season for us,” McCammon said. “You’ve got truckload after truckload, and it’s not just gettin’ them up. It’s the prep work.”

Leaf removal at IU involves using a mini-vac to gather the leaves into piles that can then be vacuumed into a truck and taken elsewhere.

“It’s beautiful with the leaves this time of year,” said Steve Bush, who has worked with Campus Division for the past 17 years. “We’ll be really busy taking care of the leaves, but we take pride in all of our work.”

Although McCammon said he enjoys interacting with students while he works, the job itself has its rewards.

“I’ll tell you what’s my reward,” he said. “After you work hard, I like to get in my vehicle and drive around and look at what we’ve done. Makes me feel good. IU really is a beautiful campus.”

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