Our View: Champ Drive and Closures Our View: Champ Drive and Closures Our View: Advance notice of road changes was needed

The ever-popular route through campus via Champ Drive is now permenatly closed. This closure wil not only effect vehicles, but pedestrians as well.

Due to the new housing construction, students and faculty cannot drive through Darwin Avenue and connect with Champ Drive. In fact, Darwin Avenue is no longer a through street.

Construction design has left Darwin Avenue as a dead-end, which forces residents to come up 700 East and curve onto 700 North. There is now only one access for the residents and this involves a lengthy drive down the hill and turnaround — which may or may not be illegal, but is not safe — at the bottom, only to drive up once again.

Pedestrians are forced to find alternate routes to campus as well. The pathway which ran up Old Main next to the once-existing steam plant, is no longer accessible to students. The path has been moved north to create futher confusion to campus goers.

In additon to the alternate routes on the west side of campus, parking has been taken from faculty and students to accommodate the new recital hall. More than 100 faculty parking spaces were moved near the Fine Arts Visual building due to construction.

To make up for lost parking, student parking near the Nutrition and Food Science building has been decreased to accommodate the lost faculty parking.

To curb the stresses of these changes, notification to students should have taken place. Not only with the alternate driving routes, but for the change in parking as well. Therefore, students could evaluate whether or not to purchase parking passes, and for which parking lot.

With increased traffic on the sidewalks of Old Main, the university can still somewhat rectify the situation by making sure there is proper maintance during the winter months to prevent any injuries due to ice build-up.