Walking to early classes all week can be a drag, but it turns into an issue when going outside in the morning creates fear.
Idaho weather is always dicey. Palouse weather, however, is even more unpredictable. It looks like the snow might be gone for now, but let’s reflect on just how death-defying these last couple of weeks have been for campus travelers.
Snow hit campus at a rapid rate, and every day is questionable on if it will snow again. Cloudy days turn into sun, but sun soon turns into a cloudy sky again. It’s always a toss-up.
Lindsay Trombly | Argonaut
When it does snow down on campus, it doesn’t tend to go away. Ice eventually freezes over on sidewalks everywhere. This is a real problem. Campus workers plow the snow and put dirt down, but it is not done often enough or in the right areas.
Early mornings are slick and cold, but mostly icy. When I walk outside of my dorm building on the LLC courtyard, a giant block of ice greets me on the sidewalk. Even wearing snow boots, I have to walk with care to avoid falling.
People should walk carefully on ice in general, but having the sidewalks completely covered in ice should not be a problem on a college campus with pedestrians everywhere.
It’s unsafe. Not putting dirt down or trying to remove the ice outside college dorms is an issue. Students walk in those areas every day and multiple times a day.
Safety is a must. It’s the same thing as people plowing their driveway to a home. It’s a regular thing people do, and we need to have people take care of the ice outside the dorms.
It isn’t just around the dorms where deicing has become a problem. There are unsuspecting areas all around campus with sheets of ice that just won’t go away, especially if you are walking in the early morning.
Students walk around campus all the time and having dangerous ice as our walkway isn’t good. The university needs to decrease the risk of students falling on frozen ice for various reasons.
Students aren’t just at risk either. Professors and university staff are at risk of falling on the blocks of ice too. It takes everyone so much longer to commute and even more worry during that commute.
It may sound simple or funny. But we should take the issue of ice seriously. We are all at risk of falling.
The university should re-evaluate when dirt is dispersed and what time of day this is done to keep everyone safer.
The university should take notice, and deice our sidewalks with more care.
As a community and a college campus, we need to represent safety. The first step to demonstrating this is deicing the sidewalks properly and in the correct areas. Take it from someone who knows just how scary a simple class to walk can be.
Let’s hope the rest of March brings more sun and we have the rest of the year to prepare for another winter of falling, slipping and sliding.
Lindsay Trombly can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @lindsay_trombly