Walking into The Break, located on the ground level of the EMU, one’s eye might immediately go to the wall of pictures next to the counter. Prom couples, babies, Autzen Stadium, a pair of ice sculpture hands wearing olives on the fingers, and a black-and-white photo of a little boy on a bicycle taken in 1947 are all part of the same collage with one thing in common: None of The Break employees knows who any of subjects are.
Every picture decorating the pool hall was misplaced somewhere on campus and subsequently submitted to The Break, which houses the University’s lost and found.

“We get really weird stuff,” said Break Manager Tamira Atkinson, who said the most bizarre item she’s come across is a sadism and masochism whip. “I think it’s disgusting. I can’t believe people lose some of the stuff they do.”
Behind the counter, some of the lost and found’s newest additions sit in a large cardboard box. Items run the gamut from everyday things – such as sunglasses, keys, and cell phones – to not so everyday things, such as a small charm of Vishnu, a Hindu deity with four arms and blue skin who represents goodness and mercy, and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” on DVD.
There are also several purses, including a large vinyl tote bag featuring Snoopy at a French baguette shop and a striped burlap bag containing lipstick, a scarf and a copy of Charles Dickens’ classic “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Athletic shorts, a green-and-white Oregon scarf, an umbrella, a bike lock, notepads, calculators and a few books – “The Spike” by Damian Broderick, “America on Trial” by Alan M. Dershowitz and “Ancient Tales and Folklore of China” by Edward T.C. Warner – round out the items in the box.
Hoang Pham, a freshman pre-journalism major who works at The Break, said employees always log lost and found items into a computer. Some of the more eccentric items he found on the list include a bath towel, a pink poodle finger puppet with a sound button and a bottle of Butane fuel.
“When I was logging it, I was like, ‘What do people do with some of this stuff?’” he said.
Older items go into a closet, which has an entire rack of jackets; a crate of scarves and gloves; and a bookshelf filled with other miscellaneous items, which range from a cowboy hat to a 7-pound plastic jug of pink vanilla cotton candy sugar.
There is an entire section of a shelf dedicated to plastic Nalgene bottles, while other shelves house a lei made from fake red flowers, a bicycle helmet, an empty gumball machine and The Game of Life, a popular Milton Bradley board game.
Some of this Motley Crue of random artifacts will not be in The Break for much longer, as the pool hall will hold its biannual sale Wednesday and Thursday. Atkinson said the sale, wherein everything is sold for $5 or less, typically makes about $800.
“We have to keep everything for six months,” Atkinson said, “just in case someone comes to claim that whip or the cotton candy sugar.”
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