Pax came to town with a real sense of doom last week. No, not Angelina Jolie’s son Pax, but winter storm Pax. It rolled through town, leaving an apocalyptic-looking winter wasteland in its wake. And as much as I love snow days and cheer for the snow to keep on coming, I can’t help but acknowledge Elizabethtown College’s somewhat ineffective responses to the inclement weather.
For starters, I think it’s really unnecessary that the school feels the need to wait until the last minute to cancel classes. While local schools and businesses issue their closing declarations the night before, the College often waits until the last minute. For example, the storm that hit us about two weeks ago was a heavy one, and the school didn’t email students until approximately 9 a.m. By that point, students who have 8 a.m. classes had already trekked out in the snow, struggled across black ice and braved the freezing temperatures.
Senior Peach Court Apartment resident Tiana Bogino has had some bad experiences with the weather on campus. “I think that if the College is going to cancel for snow, then they need to do it the night before and not the morning of; it’s just really inconvenient, especially when our area is in a winter advisory, and everywhere else is already closed or delayed. I think if they aren’t going to cancel, then the College needs to do a much better job with shoveling and salting the walkways. For instance, this past Friday, I slipped multiple times just walking to class. The campus was literally an ice block, and the pathways were very poorly taken care of,” Bogino said.
Most of the roads around the campus get cleared pretty effectively, but the parking lots are a mess. For starters, the lots in front of the Vera Hackman Apartments are wretched. A plow is sent out, which clears out a single route through the lot. This just builds up walls of snow behind the cars. They say you can go to Campus Security and borrow a shovel to get yourself out of the spots, but the plow shoves so much snow behind the individual cars that it makes it all the more difficult to shovel yourself out.
And let’s take a minute to talk about the lot next to Brinser Hall and the BSC. We’re only allowed to park in the 15-minute spots, but with the plows just shoving the snow into a huge pile next to these spots, they’ve gone from five to two. It’s really inconvenient and ridiculous.
Talking to junior commuter Kyler Koons, I learned about a whole new aspect of the snow issues. “The College consistently tends to delegate commuter lots to other populations, as we saw with the snow and ice cleanups recently. Resident students were told to move their cars into the commuter lots during cleanups, and, therefore, they were made to occupy critical space — of which there is so little already — that commuter students had to sacrifice during those days. Additionally, no such parking lot cleanups have been scheduled for commuter parking lots, which have been in equal if not worse condition. Several spaces are still simply unusable because of snow and ice buildup,” Koons said.
His frustration is, I would dare to guess, shared by the other commuters who have to drive to school on the bad roads in town. It’s not a fault on the College’s part; that depends on the borough, but the College needs to recognize this is an aspect that must be taken into account when thinking of the safety of all the students.
“I was disappointed with the College’s handling of last Thursday’s storm, particularly because campus was open without any delay on Friday, when the roads were still impassable in many areas,” Koons went on. “Elizabethtown Borough is not, and has never been, exceptionally efficient when it comes to snow removal, and navigating local roads was a challenge for many commuters who were forced to drive treacherous distances to campus in order to attend classes. Situations like these force commuter students to choose between their academics and their safety.”
The iciness of the walkways is really hazardous. Sure, they send out emails saying the paths may be treacherous and to proceed with caution, but why don’t they actually help us more? The storm this past Thursday was pretty bad, and the walkways throughout the campus were just being plowed on Saturday. The paths right outside of the academic buildings are cleared fairly promptly but not the paths near the dorms, which is ironic because students need to walk across them to get to the academic buildings.
Ultimately, the College really needs to prepare better for these storms. If the news is saying that our area is in a winter advisory or that we are going to get a ton of snow, then the College should be able to prepare more adequately. Salt, salt, salt. It doesn’t seem too difficult. It’s just a bit of effort needed. Also, there needs to be a better way to go about the caretaking of the parking lots. It’s really a poor job that is done in those areas.
