When I decided to write this week for our newspaper, I had a much different topic in mind. This one didn’t hit me until I left our editorial meeting on Sunday evening. Or, perhaps, I should say, I didn’t hit it until then—the icy pavement and stairs that were pretty much unavoidable on campus.
Fortunately for me, I safely landed on the comfort of the laptop and notebooks I was carrying. I stood up, brushed myself off, warned the person headed down behind me to be extra careful, and then kept going, albeit a little pained and certainly even more cautious than before.
But on my way back to my residence hall, all I was thinking about was why there wasn’t salt or sand being put down to make the walkways safer. Why is it that whenever there is ice and snow on weekends, our campus always has to be paralyzed by the nuisance weather?
At Rensselaer, we are a campus that never sleeps. There are always people working in labs and studios, studying in the Rensselaer Union, or making a late pickup from the plotters in the Voorhees Computing Center. We work late into the night—late into the mornings, sometimes. We shouldn’t be forced to crawl across campus, especially to places like the Union and the dining halls­­—central locations for students—because of cold weather.
Maybe it sounds awful to say that we should have called people in on a Sunday night to help thaw out our campus. I’m sure that the Environmental and Site Services team wanted to be at home with their families. But, truthfully, our campus needed that help. I know I wasn’t the only person to have trouble crossing the slippery walkways and pavements. One person remarked to me the next day that his car was sliding down Griswold Avenue, between Freshman Hill and the Union, even as he stepped on the brake. And, come 8 am on Monday as I headed to class, our campus was still iced over, to no real surprise.
This truly is indicative of a large problem at Rensselaer. We have long misunderstood the need to offer important support services on weekends and during the nighttime. Other comparable universities have eateries open late into the night to feed the minds of our diligent students—not just a single location occasionally open until 2 am. While we are in the middle of a city, it is not a city that abounds with late-night options.
Another prime example: Our health center offers very limited hours of service for such a critical entity on campus. With thousands of students here—and more and more expected to be required to live on-campus—we should be offering round-the-clock medical services, or at least extended hours on weekends. Students don’t get sick only between 8 am and 5 pm—how convenient that would be.
It is imperative that all of these areas and many others be looked at more closely in the future. Even in these difficult financial times, we cannot sacrifice important services that keep our students safe and well while they are here. Investing a little more in these areas could definitely go a long way.
