Construction work at the Polytechnic campus has frustrated some commuters, but community members are addressing the needs of the construction victims without a voice — cacti.
Work to widen the main road is set to make transit by car, bike or foot around campus easier. But it will require the removal of various types of cacti.
Kevin Shafer, director of facilities management at the Polytechnic campus, said the construction on Campus Loop Road was a response to the growth at Polytechnic; a wider road will alleviate the flow of traffic on the main road that loops around the campus.
By: Cale Ottens and Samantha Cary
ASU and Preparatory Polytechnic Middle School students volunteered to remove about six varieties of cacti Friday morning from four different road construction sites as part of the Poly Plant Project.
ASU Facilities Management, the Office of Educational Outreach and Student Services and University Housing collaborated to manage the event.
Volunteers at the Poly Plant Project will rescue around $20,000 worth of cacti from disposal, Shafer said. After the cacti are removed from the sides of the road, construction workers will begin to widen the road into these areas where the cacti used to grow.
“I’ve been in education 21 years doing what I do at three different institutions and this is by far the best environment that I’ve been in,” Shafer said.
He said he appreciated the “close sense of community” at all levels on the Polytechnic campus.
The participating middle school students are all members of the Polytechnic community, said Mark Duplissis, executive director of high school relations at ASU. The students attend ASU Preparatory Polytechnic Middle School, a public charter school located on the Polytechnic campus.
“We get to do some really incredible things with our kids in this school and this is one of them — service projects,” Duplissis said.
The Poly Plant Project is the students’ first service project of the year, an initiative for the students to give back to the community, he said.
For now, the cacti will be placed in Polytechnic Facilities Management horticulturalist Mary George’s yard, a staging area for the project.
“These plants are hopefully to be salvaged so that we can start [replanting] them across the campus and in the housing area,” George said.
The cacti can be transferred very easily, George said. More than 60 middle school students uprooted cacti like milkweeds and hesperilla, while several ASU students moved larger Indian figs (similar to the prickly pear cactus) by cutting off clusters of the cactus’s pads. The clusters can be planted separately later to make several plants.
Agricultural business senior Kristan Milewski volunteered to move the cacti because her organic farming technologies class, which teaches students how to cultivate organic food, requires 15 hours of community service.
Milewski, an outdoors lover, has worked in the Polytechnic community garden and has helped harvest the campus date trees.
“It’s too crowded at the Tempe campus ... when you come out here you’re getting away from the busyness of Tempe,” Mileski said.
Along with the road construction, a new residence hall, dining facility and student recreation facility will also be constructed over the summer to be ready for fall 2012.
“The roads I agree are pretty bad, so that would be a good investment, but as far as dorms go … we can’t even fill up most of the dorms here in the first place,” business administration junior Arreon Miller said.
Reach the reporter at hhuskins@asu.edu
