Opinion > November 29, 2007

It has recently come to the attention of the Old Gold & Black that the bus stop on campus was moved about a year ago but that the shelter from the previous stop was not moved to the new bus stop.

This may seem like a small oversight and on a sunny day it’s easy to ignore the issue. But there are many people on this campus who use the bus stop every day, rain or shine, and to them a shelter can mean the difference between comfort and cold. Some facilities workers, ARAMARK employees and other dedicated university staff members take the bus every day. It seems the oversight has been one of miscommunication, because the project is low on the list of administrative priorities.

A bus stop shelter may not seem important to those who do not use it, but many members of the community do use the bus and are sitting out in the cold and the wet when the university could easily rectify the issue. It’s not even necessary to build a new shelter. The shelter located across from Olin Physical Laboratory was designed to be portable. It would take the work of an afternoon at most to transplant the shelter to the new stop near the red light on campus.

If students were the ones waiting in the rain, the university might have acted faster. We’ve all seen the cozy shelter at Student Drive that students can congregate in to wait for the shuttle service. But staff members, who will have much longer to wait for their ride, are left out in the elements. It’s such an easy fix that it should be a non-issue, but when employees have been waiting for over a year for a resolution, it becomes an act of negligence.