By Daniel Covington
For the past few weeks, weather around Centre’s campus has been as bad as it could be. To start the CentreTerm semester, there was an unprecedented snow storm that led to an ultra-rare Centre College snow day. As a result, students returned to campus later than usual, citing the dangers on the road as well as dangers around Centre’s campus. Thankfully, Danville was able to get the roads mostly under control by the time the new semester officially started.
Over the last few weeks, Centre’s snow response has been inadequate. As of writing this, there are still several walkways that were never cleared. Crews cleared half, if not 75 percent, of all walkways, but the lack of effort to get all paths and stairs has made it a danger for students. For example, I walked out the back door of the gym, but little did I know that there wasn’t any salt or shoveling of the snow on the stairs just outside of the doors. By the time I had realized this, the door had already closed behind me. Worse, it was an exit-only door. Holding on to the railing as I kept slipping on the ice, I finally made it down the stairs and began walking back to my dorm.
This has been made infinitely worse by the re-freezing of areas that were not cleared. They appear to just look like snow to students, when in actuality they are more like a rough, slippery piece of ice. If your shoes don’t have traction, you could slip and fall, which is very dangerous.
When I saw this, the question of “Is the campus really safe?” occurred in my head. Even some of the student parking was never plowed for snow, especially the JVAC lot near the post office, causing many students to get stuck or to struggle to drive safely. Many students probably expected that, between the college and the city of Danville, the roads, walkways and parking lots would have been cleaned and made safer. Given the fact not all people are reasonably experienced with navigating and driving in snow, this could result in damage or less-than-ideal situations that students should not have to worry about if the college took all necessary precautions in their snow response. Knowing all this, there has been some damage in and around the JVAC parking lot because students have gotten stuck or had trouble starting or stopping their cars.
Most surprising and unfair is that, according to some students, building janitorial staff were put in charge of clearing the outside surrounding dorm doors. Students thought that this was a bit over the line of Centre, to ask cleaning staff to do outdoor work in extreme temperatures when they do not get paid the same as those who work outside.
All in all, it’s not that Centre isn’t putting in the work. Staff did indeed stay longer and came in on weekends during the storm to help clean campus, and they did do a good job. But even weeks after the original snow, there are many slick spots that have made navigating campus more dangerous than usual. Centre could do more to ensure the safety of students and staff by avoiding this and hiring proper crew for handling snow.