By Kelly Glista
Sandwiched between the constant traffic of the Hempstead Turnpike, the noise of the football fields, and hidden behind the University Club, the University Bird Sanctuary has taken the punishment for its neighbors.
The Progressive Students Union (PSU) and the Student Organization for Animal Rights (SOAR) at Hofstra have recently been working on a project to clean and renovate the sanctuary. According to PSU vicepresident Eric Dubinsky, a senior psychology major, has been neglected for about 13 years. The two organizations brought about 12 students over to the sanctuary to start the process.
"We want it to be a place where students can relax," said Isabelle Goodman, a freshman sociology major and member of PSU.
If the project goes as well as planned, the groups would eventually like to be able to open the sanctuary to students, put in lockers and even have yoga mats available, said Goodman.
The first cleanup removed four trash bags of garbage, said Shannon Healy, a member of PSU and a freshman at Hofstra.
"It's pretty gross," she said.
The two acres of land is actually the property of the Department of Transportation, rented by the university starting in 1991, when the sanctuary was established. The pond is a groundwater recharge basin 15-feet below ground level, and receives the runoff water and trash, from both the turnpike and the University's parking lots. Being that far into the ground, it is protected from some of the noise of the neighboring turnpike, but not the loud music from the football fields.
The sanctuary goes unnoticed to many students except the few science classes that occasionally use it for lessons and students like Shannon Healy, who found it when she arrived at the University this year.
"It was like the second day I was here I just walked around campus," she said.
When she saw the bird sanctuary entrance was locked she was intrigued and began asking questions about the sanctuary. She eventually received a tour from the groundskeeper. Healy said when she saw the state the sanctuary was in, she took the information to PSU with the hopes that other students would help her do something about it.
"They're [students] either uninformed or don't even know it's here," said Healy.
Dubinsky admits the sanctuary is hard to find and says that PSU and SOAR, which are mostly made up of the same 15 or so students, are looking for student involvement in the spring when the project continues.
"It could be a great place for people to go," he said.
Healy considers the sanctuary the most beautiful place at Hofstra. She thinks the rest of campus is "...pretty, but almost pretty in a fake way."
The project will be on hiatus for the winter, but the spring the group will pick up where they left off making birdhouses, and draining the pond to collect the rest of the garbage from the bottom. Both organizations are now just hoping to get more of the student population aware of the bird sanctuary as a resource.
"One person makes a big difference," said Healy.
Efforts made to preserve the homes of Long Island dwelling birds.