# Campus furniture clear-outs to wait for the first rain

> A School of Emergent Priorities teaching case follows a sofa on a shire cul-de-sac, and the University has adopted its rule for furniture left out for collection on campus.

A regional shire's Waste Services Committee has a way of knowing when a householder means it. The committee collects a booked bulk item from a cul-de-sac only after the booking number chalked on the item has been rained on, and it reads that first shower as the sign that the item has truly been left behind. A teaching case from the School of Emergent Priorities, published today as a marketing poster, follows one sofa through the dry months that rule produces.

The case was written by Doctoral Candidate Hedvig Anyanwu with Lecturer Dr Iben Chikere. It takes the committee's minutes, the street's own account of the wait and the chalk itself as its sources, and sets them out in the case-method manner for students of the Master of Priority Studies.

> A booking is a promise made in chalk, and chalk is a patient witness. We were glad to sit beside it for a season.
>
> --- Doctoral Candidate Hedvig Anyanwu, School of Emergent Priorities

On the strength of the case, the University has resolved that furniture put out for clearing on campus will be collected once the first rain has fallen on its marked tag, and not before. Facilities will keep the tags, and the rule takes effect for the coming teaching period.

Dr Chikere said the case showed "how much a weather forecast already knows about what we have decided to let go."

The University is pleased to add a nature strip to the places where its teaching takes place. The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.v2wcwm.