To the Editor:

Last week’s staff editorial, “Pedestrian Safety on Campus: What we can do to make our campus safer” correctly stated the importance of developing traffic safety solutions that directly involve and benefit St. Joe’s students. Along with our neighbors, university employees, and faculty, St. Joe’s students have to deal with a United States highway route running through the middle of an 8,000-student campus, with several bus stops and an elementary school close by. It’s a challenge as visceral, unavoidable, and steady as the traffic itself. To meet that challenge, the University Student Senate is ready to lend whatever help we can.

The University’s current efforts offer some real hope for a safer future. Electronic speed signs, better audio signals, and textured warning stripes are all steps in the right direction. If lowering the speed limit is, disappointingly, not an option, any other possible steps to curb speeding should be top priorities. City Avenue must be a singular zoning challenge; however, if the process for installing traffic controls is complicated, the goal is simple: to maximize students’ safety and prevent traffic accidents caused by drivers.

Toward that goal, Student Senate will aid these efforts, however possible, from keeping students updated through our contacts in the University, providing students’ perspectives on plans, to working with the Office of Public Safety to promote safe crossing practices. Numerous senators have already begun working together with President Natale to develop a coordinated, long-term approach to maintain through the safety process, with one simple goal: to keep students involved in their own wellbeing. If the problem involves the students, so will the solution.

Respectfully,

Ali Natale ’18
President, University Student Senate

Julian Lutz ’19
Community Relations Chair,
University Student Senate

Whitney Jones ’20
Public Safety Chair,
University Student Senate