To the Editor:
On Friday, April 12, I had the privilege of driving down 15th Street at approximately 10 pm to meet some friends at a local bar. The next morning, I noticed that two of my tires and parts of my driver’s side doors are splattered with white paint.
Furious, I retraced my steps from the previous night (from my apartment, to the Union, to the meeting place) and I noticed two sloppily painted crosswalks on the road. One was painted directly in front of 2001 15th Street, the other in front of 2009 15th Street. These addresses happen to be houses for the RPI fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon.
I went down to the Department of Public Safety, who instructed me to call Troy Police, which I did. An officer arrived, inspected my car and took a report for criminal mischief, a Class A misdemeanor. Then he went across the street to talk to some gentlemen (using the term extremely loosely) who unilaterally denied painting the crosswalks, much less knowing who did them.
Ironically, these crosswalks’ appearance happened to coincide with a party (which I witnessed) that this fraternity was having. It is also somewhat suspect that these lines marked a makeshift boundary for this fraternity’s three houses. It doesn’t take a team of RPI engineers to figure out that painting crosswalks in the middle of a block where they don’t belong is completely unacceptable behavior, not to mention illegal.
Considering that there is a playground less than a block away from these crosswalks, children could use these markings to cross the middle of 15th Street and be struck by a driver who is unaware of them. Whoever painted these lines obviously has no common sense, much less respect for anyone else’s well being other than their own.
The Troy police have referred this matter to the Department of Public Safety, and I will be taking this up with the dean of Greek Affairs. I strongly urge any RPI students that were driving or walking on 15th Street at or about 10 pm on April 12 to inspect their cars for damage and if they saw anyone painting these lines to call the department of Public Safety or Troy Police. Conduct like this should not be tolerated. And people wonder why the greek systems at colleges across the country get a bad reputation sometimes.
Jeffrey D. Balcom
MGMT ’03
