This past winter has been an unusually brutal one, even for Erie.

We’ve had snow, we’ve had rain and with those two come lots of ice.

Mercyhurst’s response to this ice has been mixed at best.

For most of the main roads and sidewalks, the ice isn’t an issue.

It becomes a much bigger issue the second you try to take one of the less-used paths to get to where you’re going.

While walking to the side entrance of Hirt, I was surprised to see that most of the path had been iced over.

I had to walk in the ankle-deep snow just to avoid slipping and falling all the way down the hill!

That’s not to say that this is an entirely nonexistent problem on the main paths.

I’ve noticed that the paths surrounding Egan have occasionally suffered from ice as well. Same with the path that leads to the Laker.

I understand that there are a lot of paths on campus, and it is easy for things to fall through the cracks every now and again, but there are paths on campus where after every rainfall, you
can’t walk on them for a few days or risk slipping right down the path.

As someone who walks most places on campus, this got very annoying.

The snowy season is slowly coming to an end.

But this is something that should be kept in mind in case we get another Christmas-esque snowstorm, or for next year.

In all, the teams doing the salting and snow-clearing at Mercyhurst are doing a good job, but they need to focus more on the paths less-traveled on campus.