Among ONU’s Core Values are Collaboration, Community, and Diversity. We believe these values require us to create and ensure a welcoming and safe environment for everyone. Part of creating this environment is ensuring the campus is accessible to all. Ohio Northern has a beautiful campus and community, but this great resource is stifled by its shortcomings in accessibility and pedestrian access. We believe that there are already many good places to walk on campus, but many places could be improved.
First, we want to identify a few major walkways with room for improvement for pedestrians. We believe that spaces around the fraternity circle should add some sidewalks for a better walkway connecting the inner island to the rest of campus. Crossing from the tundra to the circle around Neiheiser Lake is unprotected, drivers drive in a circle around this area, with little lighting to see pedestrians. The recommendations for the campus master plan include eliminating the outer loop of the fraternity circle. They do not include addressing the issue of pedestrian safety in the area.
We have found that some areas around the Founder’s Complex are not well-defined. If someone wants to walk from Founder’s to the Green Monster, they must walk either unprotected in the middle of parking lots, or walk in the grass. Or go all the way to Affinity to access safe crosswalks to the Green Monster.
We asked about this lack of connection at the master plan event. BHDP responded that adding a connection would be a great idea, and better connections would be part of the considerations surrounding the planning for a future Health and Wellness Center. This would be especially true if that center is placed as a frame around the tundra. They did admit that they had not considered the lack of connection between the Founder’s complex and the green monster.
Lastly, regarding pedestrian safety, a crosswalk along with rumble strips should be added in the Clark Parking lot between the library and the engineering building. This is because some pedestrians have been concerned about the speed of drivers in that parking lot, ignoring stop signs in the area. A crosswalk should also be painted between the mainland campus and the courtyard apartments. In the master plan recommendations presentation, BHDP recommended making this area more of a multipurpose environment, changing the type of pavement, and making it a better experience for pedestrians, while maintaining it as a potential street, usable for service vehicles.
For drivers, we have identified one major point of need. The street between the Inn and the Macintosh parking lot is confusing for drivers and dangerous for pedestrians. Going towards Main Street there are points where the street is in two lanes, then merges into one, then returns to two, and includes unlabeled turn lanes. This could result in cars merging into each other or other confusion. Further, across the main entrance to the inn, there should be a crosswalk to protect pedestrians crossing from the inn parking lot to the rest of the sidewalk headed towards Main Street. Alternatively, the space can turn into a roundabout.
We want to note that in the BHDP’s recommendations for the campus master plan, there are some suggested changes to roadways and signage that we are sympathetic to and some we are not. Many of the questions at the presentation centered around accessibility, and BHDP seemed to express that they had not gone into the finer details of what their proposals would look like. This is because they expect to fix many of those details as part of their larger projects, but we want this article to show many of these accessibility concerns before they become a problem. We want the university to take a proactive approach toward promoting accessibility for its students, staff, and faculty. We believe that the changes we recommend can be part of that proactive and reasonable approach.
Contributions to this article have come from Ohio Northern University’s College Democrats, such as Michael Kirchner, Troy Welker, and Ian Vawter. ONU College Democrats held a general meeting to discuss many parts of this article on February 29th.