The air is fresh, Risman Plaza is rebuilt, all your friends are returning – the beginning of the school year is nothing but phenomenal. People flood campus, some with wide eyes, and it all starts to sink in: School has begun. Somehow you get out of bed for that far-too-early class and end up all the way across campus. That’s not to say the journey there was easy. It seems like, in today’s culture, there is a complete disregard for order on the sidewalk, and a college campus is one of the largest perpetrators on the matter.

We’re taught to drive on the right side of the road and to make a wide left. It keeps your two-ton vehicle from slamming into another two-ton vehicle and keeps order in public transportation. There is a sense of right and wrong given to where you should be as you travel while in a motorized vehicle. Safety aside, it’s simply for your own convenience, too.

When you step onto a sidewalk, however, it is complete chaos. For whatever reason, when we are outside of a vehicle, people seem to forget there is a sense of order that needs to be kept. Instead of realizing that for the general flow of traffic on a sidewalk you should walk on the right side, it ends up becoming a conglomerate of ducking and dodging, hoping you don’t end up pummeled by a Kent State tight end on your way to White Hall.

This complete lack of order can be simply put to rest by taking your own initiative on the matter. Walk on the right side of the road. I mean that in both senses: the right as in the correct, and the right as in not the left. No one is going to force you to walk on the right side, but there is some simple common courtesy to cause a nice flow of traffic on the sidewalks, just like on the roads.

Matthew Colwell is a junior integrated language arts major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].