With all of construction happening around and on campus, students are finally speaking out about how they feel.

College Hill renovations are underway, and the construction workers seem to be unaware of the fact that they are upsetting many students on Washburn’s campus. This is surprising, considering they blocked off one of our major access points to the campus. When I pulled up to 17th street about a week ago, I was upset to see that the street leading directly to the building I desired had been closed off. I was already running late, and with the road work and such, I had to completely change my route to school, therefore I was late to class. I asked Rebecca Broxterman, a freshman at Washburn, how the construction was affecting her punctuality, she said that it has made her late to class numerous times. Josh Torrez, also a freshman at Washburn, agreed with her. Being late to class isn’t really that big of a deal, since we no longer get detentions for being tardy, but it really puts you in a foul mood to start your day off by being late to your first class, or even any of your classes, really.

One day, prior to the road being torn to shreds, I was driving on Lane St. when a big truck backed out into the middle of the street, with no warning at all. This truck belonged to one of the employees of Property Management. The truck had no hazard lights or anything, not even a loud beeping noise to give other drivers a fair warning to slow down. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid ramming my front end into him.

When I asked the manager of Property Management, Jeff Meyer, if he could account for this, all he could say was that it wasn’t his fault, nor was it his employees fault. His only justification was that he never knows who exactly is working each day and he never saw or experienced anything like that ever happening. My question is, when working at a construction site, don’t they think it would be a good idea to know who you are distributing paychecks to? Meyer also stated that the men working at the site drive their own vehicles, so it’s up to them to be careful and watch out for on-coming traffic. So, I went and spoke to one of his “employees.” All his employee could say was, and I quote, “They just need to watch where they’re going.” He also said “it’s their own driving stupidity.” He said this in regards to students being upset about the worker’s driving behaviors. How is it our fault that they pull out in front of us, over a curb, in fact, without any warning what-so-ever?

I think that it should be required for all vehicles in that line of work to have warning equipment on them. These construction workers need to realize that they aren’t the only people involved in the College Hill experience. We’re all involved and they need to respect the students that will be eventually using College Hill, as well as those who just have to drive through the area.