We are quickly nearing the end of the semester and there have been so few cars on the Path. This is extremely disappointing, especially considering the standards students have come to expect over the past few years.
Students who have been at Drew for four years may recall when we all woke up to a car stuck in Tipple Pond after a large storm. Additionally, almost all newer students can recall seeing a car driving across the center of campus at least once. Sadly, this semester feels like it’s lacking something, since cars have, for the most part, remained on the roads.
There is one clear solution to this issue: administrators should make immediate changes so that campus is harder to navigate.
We are already so lucky to have nonsensical, winding roads and paths, often obscured by foliage, but we could be making an effort so that things are even harder to find.
It is not enough that there are countless unnamed streets, parking lots and paths, we should be actively trying to confuse people about their location.
The few navigational signs that there are should be relabeled to be more ambiguous and misleading, so that it becomes nearly impossible to find your way once you are lost.
Additionally, by moving parking lots and building signs to more discreet locations, ideally places that cannot be seen from paths and streets, we could truly bamboozle even the best navigators.
We want fewer obvious signs and landmarks, so that even the brave souls who stop to ask for directions cannot possibly understand where they are meant to go. Their only hope to find their destination should be a list of turns that guide them in circles or, better yet, a student telling them they honestly cannot give them easy directions and they’re better off asking someone else.
We should not rest until people cannot find where they are going even with the help of online navigation. This would involve requesting for locations on campus to be removed from popular web mapping platforms like Apple Maps, Google Maps and Waze. With this simple step completed, navigators would have no hope to find where they are going or where they are.
The next step, of course, is to remove the few obstructions that prevent cars from driving on the path.
Rideshare and food delivery drivers should not have to navigate around obtrusive bollards to gain access to the paths. The few traffic posts we have deter cars from going exactly where we want them: on the same path students need to use to get to their destinations.
Making all of these easy changes would not only allow more traffic to cruise along our walkways, but would also help confuse new pedestrians.
There is nothing more enjoyable than seeing a new face on campus looking lost—except perhaps for when these people interrupt whatever you’re doing to ask how they can walk to their destination.
It’s ridiculous that we are only occasionally asked where important buildings, like the library, the Forum and the Commons are. These places should be infinitely less accessible to people unfamiliar with our campus.
Our final recommendation is to dim or remove the few and far between streetlights, so that our campus turns into a winding, dark forest after dark. This would make it so difficult for newcomers to find their way that they would have no choice but to aimlessly wander until they get stuck or crash.
We believe that with a little dedication and very few changes, we could turn our campus into an uninviting enigma where all who enter never return. Coincidentally, our next Lead Editorial will be about our recommendations for a new student recruitment strategy which consists of targeting the people who are already stuck on campus.
The Lead Editorial is a reflection of the collective opinion of the editorial board.
