Click here for an audio slideshow about the grounds crew.
Roy Brannon said he agrees with just about everybody else — school should have been canceled at least part of last week.
But it wasn't up to him to decide. Instead the seasoned facilities and landscape worker pounded back countless cups of coffee, some Hostess snacks and bowls of popcorn to stay awake during his 16-hour shifts last week as he tried to help keep the streets and sidewalks around Ball State as safe as possible.
The grounds crew is still battling the winter storm that swept the country's midsection, leaving more than 86,000 people in Indiana without power last week. Their job is to clear off a heavy blanket of snow and melt the ice that's below it.
Barbara Stader, another groundskeeper, said it's hard to notice any progress.
"We're tired," she said, "tired of this. I drink a lot of Coke. I eat some sugar to stay going. We laugh, just trying to make the best of it... we're discouraged. We just take it as it comes, do the best we can, hope people understand."
Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president of Facilities Planning and Management, said the grounds crews did everything they could to treat the sidewalks to get the snow blade under the ice. The snow brooms aren't useful for clearing ice.
Salt can't melt ice without water, Kenyon said, so the grounds crews start the deicing process by spraying a salt solution.
"Most people don't understand if we salt then plow it is a waste," he said. "It is better to plow and get the snow and ice removed, then lay down the salt and let it sit."
The crews just need one day for the weather to stop and let them catch up, Brannon said.
On Saturday, he missed seeing his son's basketball team scrimmage during the men's game at Worthern Arena. Instead, he was plowing the sidewalks just outside the gym.
"I might be able to stop in and say ‘hi,'" he said. "Yeah, I hate that too, but that's the way it works."
Everybody on the grounds crews has a certain route and assignment for the day, Brannon said. It can get monotonous — going over the same area over and over again — but it's nice when you can see results from the day's work.
"Once it stops snowing and you can see that you've made progress, to me that's really rewarding," he said.
The biggest challenge for the grounds crew is being aware of their surroundings, making sure their path doesn't cross with cars and pedestrians.
"You're always having to do a 360 with your eyes to make sure you're not going to run into anybody and nobody is going to run into you," he said.
For the most part, students have been courteous, he said.
Sometimes they complain when their cars get plowed in during the process of scraping parking lots and sidewalks. Brannon said he spent all day Friday dipping out cars that had three or four feet of snow piled up behind them.
"I'm sure that's probably one of the aggrevations from the students, that we plow their car in or whatever," he said. "But we really don't mean to do that."
Brannon said dealing with sleep deprivation is a major challenge and it's affecting his game. He's normally the ping-pong champion when he plays against his coworkers during lunch breaks, but "the king of ping" might be dethroned after this week.
"Just this week alone we're going on close to 30 hours overtime," he said. "We've got to get this job done...I guess I'll be here until it stops melting."
Brannon said there's a group meeting to discuss things the grounds crews did well and things to improve on after most major projects and he expects there might be a meeting after the juggernaut of snow passes.
"We can always learn something or [figure out] how to do something better," he said. "I take it as constructive suggestions. If there's a way that I'm plowing that I can do better, I would want my boss to tell me that."
Personally, he suggests getting more equipment, but that means more personnel which might be an obstacle.
Landscape services supervisor Jeff Jones said he hopes people will be patient as the grounds crews continue to move the snow and scrape the ice. Several vehicles and pieces of equipment are being repaired.
He said it's hard for them to be running for so long each day.
An inch of snow and "another blast of arctic air" is expected tonight, according to the National Weather Service.
"We've probably got five or six plows out, so we're not totally behind yet, but we need a couple more plows up and running," Jones said Saturday. "We'll get there."
-Jaclyn Goldsborough contributed to this story.
Info box: Ball State offers housing for students and their neighbors who experience power outages or who live in chilly, drafty apartments. Local residents should seek help through the community and Red Cross.
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