Students who enjoy splashing through the giant puddles that accumulate on the sidewalk outside Olin will now have to get their feet wet elsewhere, as the area has been reconstructed as part of a recent wave of ground works in preparation for Commencement Week.
According to Ann Marino, assistant librarian and facilities coordinator at Olin, the library first sent out a request to raise the sidewalk approximately two years ago, but Physical Plant was unable to respond because of lack of financial resources. Because the pavement sinks into the ground near the steps leading to Clark Hall, rainy days meant that students and library staff had to either wade through mud or splash through water before reaching drier ground.
Many a tour guide accustomed to the hazards of walking backwards noted the puddle problem outside Olin.
“There are so many little hills on campus, you always have to watch where you’re going,” said Petra Groeneveldt ’08, a tour guide. “The water doesn’t have any room to run anywhere so it basically sits in one place and collects. Even if you’re not a tour guide, you have to watch where you’re going or you’ll walk into a pole, or a puddle, or a tree.”
“I’ve never tripped there,” she added.
After two students tripped and fell in the area, including a tour guide giving a tour to a group of parents and prospective students, Olin alerted Physical Plant once again, who came to the rescue.
“That place was an ankle twister,” said Dave Hall, grounds and events manager.
The Olin puddles were prevalent due to weather and human traffic crossing the area day to day. Particularly at the point just before the stairs, the sidewalk had sunk so deeply into the earth that the original cement had to be torn up and replaced with a layer of topsoil and cement to eliminate the unevenness of the ground.
Hall said that efforts had been made to raise the ground before, which for a long time has been identified as a problem area, but nevertheless, the puddles persisted. Finally, the Garofalo and Saraceno concrete contractor, a local business based in Middletown, was called in to pump cement under the sidewalk in order to level the ground.
Besides the Olin sidewalk, the area between North College and the squash courts is also particularly hazardous when it comes to puddle accumulation, and has required repeated efforts by Physical Plant to smoothen out the area.
“We dug that area up and inserted concrete last fall, but it was so wet that it didn’t compact right,” Hall said.
The Olin puddle problem was successfully eliminated in time for WesFest, although this was not a factor taken into consideration by Physical Plant. Administrators at Physical Plant maintain that they schedule projects not according to upcoming University events, but in order to interfere as little as possible with daily student traffic.
Nevertheless, Commencement Week seems to be a driver behind many of the other upcoming groundwork projects that can be observed around campus. These include redoing the sidewalks in front of the East Asian Studies center, Malcolm X house, and the Campus Center. Physical Plant will also continue laying down turf and planting grass in sections along Church Street.
In addition to more work on the sidewalks, students can expect to see more fences surrounding the grassy area in front of Olin, the Campus Center, and the lower sections of Foss Hill where students tend to cut across grounds.
“The turf is meant to enjoy,” said Hall. “But you don’t want to create a dirt path there that’s going to tear everything up.”
Students in a hurry may gnash their teeth at the new prevalence of fences keeping them from taking short cuts, but it is all part of the larger plan to keep the campus looking pretty when the seniors say their last goodbyes.
“We need the place looking its best for commencement,” Hall said. “We try to give that to every class.”
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