As a college student, being able to navigate the campus in a timely and safe manner is important. However, the roads on and around campus aren’t easily traversable. 

One of the main problems is the fact that North Caraway Road isn’t a full street. If I’m just wanting to drive from the North Park Deck to Sorority Row, the Fowler Center, or even the Red Wolf Center, I’d have to turn off onto East Johnson, one of the busiest roads in town, and turn by University Loop, an intersection that’s backed up a lot of times.

This issue is made even worse when trying to drive on campus after football games. 

For homecoming, I parked at the sorority houses before the game and walked to the stadium. Getting out of there afterward was insanely difficult, especially when I was just trying to go back to University Hall. 

If the road connecting Aggie Road and North Caraway was still open, it would be much easier and a lot of traffic would be spread out between college students and other gameday attenders. If it’s safety people are worried about, add speed bumps and make the crosswalks brighter, especially since it’s Arkansas law for drivers to stop at crosswalks for pedestrians.

Other entrances need to be made as well. 

Marion Berry Parkway gets extremely congested in the mornings and the afternoons, and the stoplight connecting it to East Johnson doesn’t make it much better. 

If I’m just wanting to get to the University Hall parking lot, I should be able to enter from the backway instead of having to deal with going down East Johnson and making what’s essentially a big loop. 

I’d also recommend there being another keycard entrance off of Marion Berry to get into the University/Kays Hall parking lot, namely where the barrier is. This is another thing that would help with the congested traffic on that street. 

A lot of the roads actually on campus aren’t the best either. 

There are many potholes and other parts of the road that make driving difficult for students — this includes streetlights around campus. When it gets dark at 6:30 p.m. in October, a majority of people are still trying to get to other parts of campus for various reasons. 

Whether it be Greek life events, church events, clubs, sports or even classes, students still need to drive to parts of campus. It’s not like the students can walk to the other side of campus either. 

There are so many hills and the buildings are so spread out on campus that just walking to class from your dorm can wear the students out. 

In short, the roads and traffic patterns on campus are some of the most flawed parts of Arkansas State, yet they’re some of the most important parts of college campuses. 

Categories: Opinion

Tags: Article, Opinion