The Slippery Rock Student Government Association held its annual Campus Crawl Thursday from 6:30-8:30 p.m., which allowed the SRU students to help find improvements that can be made to the campus safety.
Students met outside of the suite office on the second floor of the Smith Student Center to begin the crawl.
Abby Fugh, the SGA vice president of student and academic affairs, along with Claudia Hartmann, a SGA Rock Apartments senator, are in charge of the Campus Crawl and look forward to this event.
“It’s an opportunity for students to first get volunteer hours, but also give back to their campus and identify areas that can be improved,” Fugh said. “The areas could be improved with an additional stop sign, a crosswalk, or some brighter colors in areas if it needs more yellow paint or white paint. This is all to improve the accessibility and safety on campus.”
This event has been put on annually around the October-November time in the past, and has found some key safety issues on campus, Hartmann said. Lights and crosswalks are two of the major areas that are always addressed each Campus Crawl, Hartmann said. Students voice their concerns and those areas of concern are looked at first, Hartmann said.
“Lighting is definitely the main issue,” Hartmann said. “Certain lights around the campus are out and each light is identified with a number, so we write that number down in a log. People suggest certain crosswalk ideas and we try follow up on those as well.”
However, crosswalks aren’t as easy to put in as some people may think, Fugh explained. Certain reasons may arise that prevent crosswalks from being put in, whether it be the angle of the road or something else, Fugh said. If something can’t be done then there must be a reason as to why it can’t be done, so that awareness is brought to the public, Fugh said. Cracks in some of the sidewalks is always a big issue that is found during the crawl, Hartmann said. Students just need to be on the lookout for these kinds of things when going to class, so they can be fixed and improved, Hartmann said.
“There is a lot more that goes into putting in crosswalks than any of us can imagine,” Fugh said. “Especially from a maintenance perspective of the situation.”
Any student can participate in the Campus Crawl, and Hartmann encouraged students to help out. Everything students put into the logs will be addressed and looked at, Hartmann said. The logs are brought back to SGA and then taken to Scott Albert, assistant vice president of facilities & planning, for review, Hartmann said.
“I meet back with Albert to make sure we see eye-to-eye and if any discrepancies on the writing that people did in the logs,” Hartmann said. “I’ll invite other people to come with me just to see of they have anything to add at all. Contacting me is a good way for people to stay involved with things like this.”
Another incentive for students besides community service and having their campus safety concerns answered were giveaways. AVI provided cookies that were given to students who came to the event, as well as hot apple cider and a free key-chain.
The results from the Campus Crawl will be posted to SRSGA.org, as well as the goals that will look to be accomplished post-Campus Crawl.
This will be located under services on the SGA website. The turnout for this event has been around 50 students for this event, with around 50 students being the expected turnout this year, Hartmann said.
