It’s a typical Troy winter: The temperatures have fallen, the snow has fallen, the students have fallen.
Now wait a minute—the students have fallen? Alas, it’s true. Last Thursday’s storm left a lot of places on the campus in a treacherous state, and while physical facilities personnel were out in force for most of the day, their work was ultimately fruitless.
Not that they didn’t try. Their first effort was impressive, though with the ice continually falling it was nearly impossible to stay ahead of the storm. It was apparent that they were working hard to make travel around campus as safe as possible.
Once the school was closed, however, the effort was abandoned, and conditions gradually deteriorated. Worse, once the storm ended not enough was done in any but the most traveled areas to clear the sheets of ice that had formed.
Even after several days had gone by, there are still problem areas. Where cars were parked in North Lot, ice still makes it difficult to get in and out of parking spaces safely. The stairs leading down to Sage Avenue from the Quad are still covered in ice. The walks in the Quad, most notably the small sections outside the doors, remained dangerous for far too long.
RPI was caught off guard by this storm, as evidenced by the fact that the school was not closed until conditions were already quite severe. The nice weather over the last few weeks lulled us into forgetting that it’s January in Troy. We should know better than that.
Faculty, staff, and students—especially those that live on campus—depend on the school to make campus safe, even when the weather doesn’t cooperate. Last week, that was not sufficiently done. Hopefully the Institute will not be caught so badly unprepared and will more thoroughly handle the cleanup effort when the next winter storm rears its ugly head.
