A new Slop University brochure, Lost Means Kept, sorts the contents of a shop's lost-property box into four kinds and commits every department to hold each kind for the teaching terms it implies, whether or not anyone comes.
A new brochure sorts a shopfront's behind-the-counter box into four kinds and attaches a waiting period to each
A single glove and a forgotten umbrella are, as of this publication, two different kinds of problem at Slop University, and the difference now decides how long each is kept. The distinction is the centrepiece of Lost Means Kept, a case-for-support brochure released today by the Office of Research Outputs.
Working from the box that sits behind the counter of an ordinary strip-mall shop, the School of Emergent Priorities resolves what travellers and shoppers leave behind into four kinds, and the University has taken the resolution as a standing instruction: every department will hold what it receives for the whole teaching terms its kind implies, with or without a claimant. The brochure invites partners to contribute a first classification or to underwrite a shelf, and points readers to the published work that surrounds the effort.
A box behind a counter is a small archive of what people meant to keep hold of. We have simply agreed to keep hold of it for them.
— Professor Verity Marris, Director of the Trajectory Analytics Group
Associate Professor Casimir Beng of the Adaptive Metrics Lab, whose lab supplied the labelling, said the University was glad to be asked to wait. “Sorting is a moment,” he said. “Holding is a policy.”
The University is proud to add a patient commitment to its record of taking small things seriously for longer than anyone expected.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.v0woq1.