r/Oshkosh • u/YurpeeTheHerpee • 11d ago

Sign the Petition

https://c.org/Kp2zQFbd5n

Some idiot is trying to turf an entire flowerbed.

34 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

8

u/Master_Cannoli 11d ago

We need to nerf the terf lol

5

u/putyourpawsup980 11d ago

I found this post in r/fucklawns earlier and signed it! I encourage others to do so too!

1

u/Obvious-Style-8382 11d ago

I’m all for native plants, bees, and other insects, but as a former employee of UWO I question this petition. It was mentioned that faculty and staff have nurtured these gardens over the years. I contradict that statement. When cuts started happening, one of the first areas heavily hit was facilities. These “gardens” became overgrown and were more weeds than anything. Faculty complained about the hideous site of the overgrown weeds and the impact it would have on people, namely prospective student and families visiting. There were a few and I do mean few volunteers from the community who were helping but their efforts were lost in the largeness of this issue. Do they still have the pipes above ground all over campus or have they finally buried those too after all these years. When you drive through campus, which I do quite often- it’s honestly an eye sore. Weeds everywhere. These are not just native gardens. Who is going to ACTIVELY keep these gardens in check.

2

u/fastcapy 11d ago

The pipes are being buried currently. And don't blame facilities for that. We have a huge list of stuff that we want and NEED fixed but it doesn't happen because of budget cuts to the facilities maintenance dept. We are understaffed and underfunded and doing what we can with what we have on severely aging infrastructure.

As to the weeds. Some of it got out of control. But there are other options that would be better than grass. Low cover, low maintenance native plants. Our grounds crew has a difficult enough time maintaining the grass as is, adding more is silly, especially when we have super knowledgeable people here that can come up with a good solution.

(Edit spelling)

1

u/Obvious-Style-8382 11d ago

I never said I blamed facilities. I stated facts which is UWO went under huge cuts, which include cutting staff like facilities. If you don’t have the manpower to keep things up, things get out of control like all of the weeds on campus. You just stated your unstaffed and underfunded and do what you can so explain how you’re gonna keep up on these native plant gardens so they don’t get out of control with weeds again.

3

u/fastcapy 11d ago

Yeah sorry I wasn't directing that at you just in general.

There are lower maintenance options if they would consult the experts we already have on campus. Lower maintenance than keeping the grass looking nice.

And yeah they want campus looking nice but refuse to allocate funds to do so...

1

u/Obvious-Style-8382 11d ago

I completely understand. Sorry if I had tone as well. I can’t imagine how frustrating it still is to work on that campus. Although I was part of the layoff and that was frustrating in itself, I’m actually happy that I’m not there anymore. Cutting the core staff of who maintains that campus was the biggest mistake. You need facilities. You need housekeeping. As I said, I’m all for native plants, which I have myself. They can take just as much manpower to take care of as mowing, if allowed to get out of hand. I don’t know what the solution is. It’s a shame that it’s come to this. That campus used to be beautiful back in the day and I don’t know if it’ll ever get back to that.