Touching up

After students leave in the spring, Facilities workers clean floors and surfaces and touch up paint in 900,000 square feet of residential living space. The areas include 15 residence halls, 165 apartments, eight houses, eight sorority cottages, and seven fraternity houses. This is all completed once more before the fall semester. Westhampton Lake also gets attention, with a partial draining and refill, along with erosion repair.

Gathering together

Nine conferences were held, bringing 2,189 attendees to campus. The conferences ranged from gatherings of fire chiefs and a prelaw institute to high school students belonging to Future Business Leaders of America.

Spiders for life

Cannon Memorial Chapel has held all the weddings that were rescheduled due to the pandemic. This summer, six couples tied the knot on campus — including four alumni weddings — and the chapel is almost completely booked up for weddings through 2024. Alumni make up 80% of the wedding couples. 

Sporting news

Facilities workers removed the rubber base and turf from two intramural fields. The turf was donated to local organizations for baseball and softball dugouts, batting cages, and disc golf courses. Nine tons of the rubber base were reused on the football field, with an additional 3 tons set aside for future use. An organic infill was used for the new base — offering greater sustainability and a cooler surface — with new turf placed on top.

Athletes and campers

More than 1,200 athletes were on campus for the Special Olympics Summer Games, held in early June. Most of competitors stayed in residence halls.

The University also hosted 37 sports camps, drawing more than 3,700 K-12 athletes eager to improve their baseball, basketball, field hockey, football, lacrosse, and soccer skills. An additional Little Scholars camp attracted 100-plus participants.