by Ollie Gibson and Charlesie Robison
At approximately 3:40pm on March 3rd, Professor Tara Strauch was struck by a pickup truck as she crossed the intersection of College St. and W Walnut St. (i.e., Cowan to the Norton Center, pictured in featured image). As she was walking toward the parking lot, a truck driver rolled across the way toward her. When she screamed, the driver swerved to avoid her, and came to a stop after hitting her.
Professor Strauch explained to us in an interview that the truck driver “said the sun was in her eyes and I was in her blindspot. I don’t think she was a distracted driver, just that the sun was very bright at that angle and that time of day. She hit me on the side and stopped on top of my foot, requiring her to then back up back over my foot.”
Strauch recounted how the driver jumped out of the truck distraught, and Strauch comforted her that she was in fact still alive. That was before she looked down at her foot.
“Nothing is broken, but all the skin was pulled off my foot.”
Professor Strauch was wearing a pair of work flats, otherwise known as ballet flats. She doesn’t believe wearing sturdier shoes would have changed the outcome, since the truck stopped on top of her foot.
Before she was hit, Professor Strauch was heading to her car to take her kid to the orthodontist. Fellow professors were quick to help Professor Strauch out while she was hospitalized. “I needed someone to pick up my kids … I knew who would answer, so I called Dr Harney.”
The scene was noticed by students on campus as the intersection became crowded with first responder vehicles. Some students took to the anonymous social media app, YikYak, to ask what had happened and which “lady” had been hit. Some students thought the accident occurred to a fellow student. However, Professor Strauch herself replied to these posts to correct them. When we asked about her sightings on YikYak, she said: “I love YikYak; that can be a direct quote. I felt it was very important that people get their facts right. It was a truck, not a car. Also, when someone specified that I was a lady, that was very nice and made me laugh.”
Professor Strauch will be on crutches for approximately two more weeks as her injury heals. “It has been interesting to experience the campus from the perspective of someone with limited mobility. Since I live at home and not on campus, it’s not been too bad. But I must say, Crounse is hard to get to because there is nowhere to park nearby.”
“One of my students asked for my takeaways. My takeaways are this: have really good friends, and a sense of humor. My coworkers pushed their way into the ER room and they helped me laugh all the way through them fixing up my foot.”