Prioritize the Paths

Loads of snow, a surprisingly warm week and then temperatures below freezing are not the best combination. Unfortunately, that is what Exeter experienced recently, and undergoes every winter. Two storms reached the area, bringing in at least a foot of snow, and they were followed by a warm spell, melting almost all the snow. To make matters worse, temperatures then dropped suddenly and every walking path became treacherous with ice. Faculty children even made an ice rink on the south-side quad. It has been a couple of weeks since the pathways iced over, and barely anything has changed. It is still outrageously easy to slip and hurt oneself while walking to class for one reason: Exeter cut the facilities and path-clearing budget for this year.It is simply unacceptable and unreasonable that facilities now has a lower budget for clearing paths. If you have walked on campus in the last couple of weeks, you surely have seen at least one person slip—someone running late to class wiping out on the ice, or a student walking down Tan Lane and falling on his or her back. The only way to avoid the ice is to walk on the roads, which have had ice removed long ago. With the schools ninety one million dollar annual operating budget, it seems odd that an extra couple thousand dollars cannot be spent on getting the walkways cleared. Even teachers have fallen and hurt themselves badly. At some point it is going to cost more to pay for healing the injuries of the fallen than actually restoring the budget of facilities.Parents send their children thousands of miles away from home trusting that Exeter will take care of them—keep them healthy, provide nutritious meals and keep them from trouble. We should not make parents worry about yet another risk—it is one thing for a student to break a limb while doing something foolish, but it is another to break a limb when walking to class.Not only are the slippery paths a liability for the school, but they are also an embarrassment.Every day, dozens of tours for prospective students are given. As these students and their families walk around campus and look at our various buildings and programs, they cannot help but notice their feet skidding around. It would be hard to explain to a potential Exonian that they fell over on the ice because the administration wanted to save a few bucks.Most egregious of all is the fact that, while the administration claims they need to preserve their funds, Exeter is spending money left and right on unnecessary improvements. Why are there four flat screen TV’s in Elm Street Dining Hall to display the menu, when a piece of paper could easily take its place? Why does the dining hall need to get an entirely new renovation just a year after changing the layout unnecessarily?I understand that to maintain such a beautiful and thriving campus Exeter we need to continually restore buildings that are outdated. I realize Exeter should invest in fun, interesting and innovative technologies that make this school a special place. But we should not build a state of the art music building or dining hall until students can get to these buildings without putting their safety in jeopardy. 