When the snow falls in mounds and you have an early class, you shouldn’t have to arrive an hour before it starts to account for your car getting stuck in the parking lot, making the trek through unploughed pathways and slipping on slush while you walk across campus.
Every year, Brock’s commitment to winter maintenance only seems to get worse. Though the wrath of Canadian winter makes an inevitable appearance from November to March, it never quite seems like the campus is prepared to make student travels as safe as possible. Even though classes start at 8 a.m., snow and slush remain dangerous obstacles when navigating across campus until the late morning.
Take for instance Lot 1 and 2 — parts of campus which has been the subject of many rightful grievances in recent years. If you have a class before 12 p.m. and a parking permit, you can bet that you’ll have to navigate through thick layers of snow and risk getting stuck while endlessly spinning your tires before you can even use your permit in the winter. Oh well, at least parking at Brock only costs between six hundred to one thousand dollars.
As previously discussed by a fellow editor at The Brock Press, leaving parking lots unploughed through the morning rush while students are arriving to start their schooldays results in a complete lack of visible parking spaces. If students cannot see lined spaces, they have no choice but to park their vehicles in random areas. When the snow melts or is ploughed later in the day, all these vehicles end up taking multiple parking spots, massively cutting down parking spaces for permit holders and often forcing students to find (costly) parking elsewhere.
Both lots can barely fit all of their permit holders. Adding dangerous, snowy conditions to the mix can make one question if the price tag on their permit truly reflects the quality of convenience that they are paying for.
The grievances with Brock’s winter conditions stretch far beyond parking issues. You can count yourself lucky if all of your commutes to and from classes take place inside Brock’s main campus building. If not, you’re in for even more slipping and sliding.
I’ll admit that some walkways are worse than others, but it is especially troubling that some of the longest stretches across campus remain unsalted, largely unplowed and an overall dangerous terrain to navigate. If students are making the hike from Lot 2 to Plaza, or Cairns to East Academic before winter conditions have been dealt with, they must be prepared to double their commute time to stay safe.
Slushy, slippery conditions often force students to slowly shuffle their way between classes — and if you’ve got back-to-back classes across campus during the winter semester, it slowly becomes clearer that 10 minutes is not nearly enough time to make it to your lecture before it starts while walking with caution.
I will note that in my experience, Brock has been fairly good with ensuring that sidewalks are salted during ice storms or freezing rain events. However, that original diligence has not been present for the past few major snowstorms that we’ve had. When snow melts even a little bit, the result is dangerously slippery slush that plagues campus walkways. When students have just dealt with delayed buses and slick streets, it’s safe to say that slipping on slush is not on their campus to-do list. I can confidently say that it wasn’t on mine last week, and yet I found myself sliding around the walkway from East Academic towards Brock’s main campus, guiding myself through the snow only by grabbing onto the concrete parking lot dividers.
The undealt with winter conditions are especially burdensome to navigate for students using mobility aids. Piled up snow and slippery sidewalks pose dangerous accessibility hazards. In a Reddit thread discussing the inaccessible nature of Brock’s campus in the wintertime, a student noted that walkways around campus become “borderline unusable” when they’re not properly cleared. Keeping Brock difficult to navigate after winter storms shows a disregard for the safety of all students, and especially towards those who use mobility aids to navigate campus.
I recognize that Brock’s campus takes up plenty of outdoor space, leaving countless walkways for Brock’s grounds crew to attend to. To clarify, Brock’s grounds crew is not the subject of all the grievances towards campus winter maintenance. The grounds crew themselves are always working diligently to keep students safe in the wintertime. However, it is becoming quite clear that winter maintenance is not a priority for the university.
When the university knows that conditions are too bad for the grounds crew to keep up with, yet they refuse to cancel classes, both students and faculty are put in danger. The snowstorm that took place on Jan. 19 left many faculty forced to resort to online learning, acknowledging that it would just be plain dangerous for themselves and their students to attend in-person classes. When educators have to second-guess the university’s assessment of travelling conditions, it is not a good look.
So far this winter, Brock seems vastly unprepared for the wintery conditions we all knew were coming. Though nobody can control the weather, the university should have strict measures in place so that students can navigate campus without having to worry about their safety. Forcing students to attend classes in dangerous conditions while not aptly preparing for winter weather shows that student safety is not high on the university’s priority list.