Winter flower power

If you bundle up to walk outside on the Spine this week, you'll see more flowers out there than there are in June.

Seriously, UB has invested in outdoor flower arrangements, though few students are crazy enough to walk outside from Capen to the Union into the teeth of a three-degree wind-chill.

I suppose it is appropriate that the flowers are poinsettias, sometimes known as "The Winter Flower." And they're nice - I went shopping for holiday decorations with my mom over the weekend and saw the same arrangement, the hanging metal basket with the natural burlap hanging out, at Home Depot for $39.99. My mom thought about buying one, but not being an idiot, opted for the cheaper, plastic-potted version for less than half the cost. She also made sure to keep her plants inside our house and on our porch because, even though poinsettias are hearty, the plants won't survive a WNY December.

Now, I'm not saying whoever decided to hang flowers outside is dumb, but think about it: there are ten of these flower pots hanging from lampposts on the Spine at, we'll say, $40 per plant (a conservative guess, I'll admit - remember, the Alfiero Center cost $7 million, which got us a big window, some chairs and the most useless electronic ticker since the old SA sign broke). That's $400 on plants students will see on campus for a week, which is about all that's left in the semester. That is, unless it snows. Then we won't see anything but some hanging snowballs with beards.

I don't think a public university like UB, that doesn't have the housing for the 5,000 students President Simpson wants to bring in, can afford to splurge.

Maybe I'm being a bit of a Grinch. After all, aside from SA's Student Union decorations, the occasional Christmas tree in various offices and dorm room Christmas lights, the poinsettias represent the most holiday cheer the campus has had in my entire UB career.

I just think UB could do a whole lot more decorating with that $400 than some flowers that will be in the trash in two weeks. It doesn't take a Queer Eye to recognize UB has a fugly-as-all-get-out campus, so I'd like to offer a few tips of what I would do with the $400 to spruce up the place.

When I first came to UB, I honestly believed the school colors were concrete and blue. Take a walk indoors from NSC to the Union, and with the exception of Knox's pebbles and Capen's "Be Stupid" ad campaign, you'd never know that you were in a different building - it's all drywall and linoleum.

An easy way to change that would be with some color, some paint. Few remain at UB who remember the mural in what is now a white hallway on the way from Putnam's to room 150 in the Student Union. While it wasn't exactly pretty, it was interesting to look at - a sort of "Where's Waldo?" creation that made an honest, if misguided (eight different skin tones were attempted... Yeah, I counted) attempt to portray diversity and school spirit.

While I wouldn't want something as cartoony or tacky as that old mural, I think student artwork is something UB needs to stop limiting to the CFA.

The old tunnel that connected Squire and Harriman Halls on South Campus, when they took turns being UB's Student Union, used to be covered in both sanctioned student art and graffiti. The paint got so thick that shadows of long-painted-over images and words are still visible.

The current Union doesn't have to have anything so uncontrolled or gross, but there should be something. Have a mural contest every leap year, or make it someone's senior thesis. It doesn't matter, but anything would be better than the whitewashed hallway it is now. $400 can buy a lot of paint.

That money could also go towards mulch. When there is no snow on the ground, much of UB's landscaping is pretty barren. This is by nobody's fault, really - the windswept Spine and Putnam Way are more conducive to lichens and low-lying shrubs than leafy trees and flowers. But putting down some mulch every year to cover up the brown spots would be a cheap, effective fix for the non-paved patches of UB. Mulch is cheap too, and it even comes in several colors ranging from brown to burnt umber, and even brick red!

My last suggestion is more in line with the holiday season: put the damn flowers indoors. Hang them, pot them, stack them in a pyramid, I don't care. As long as they are in a place where students will see them and last more than a fortnight.