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At any time, on any given day of instruction, you can see hundreds of students milling about: Moving from point A to point B or just hanging out. In large groups or alone, quickly or slowly, the small total area of the paved walkways on campus withstands thousands upon thousands of footsteps daily. Yet despite the astronomical number of possible ways individual students and visitors on campus could be traveling, the sidewalks were purposely arranged in an erratic and seemingly arbitrary manner.

Why is this? It baffles me to the point of annoyance. Every time I need to go through the quad, in a hurry or not, following the sidewalks doubles or triples the distance I would travel in a straight line. When I first started going here, I would usually only walk on the designated paved walkways. As time progressed, however, I found myself decreasingly concerned with the proper upkeep of the grass. Not that I don’t respect the fine work of the grounds keeping staff, this is far from being the case. It’s that I feel like I’m following a convoluted pirate’s treasure map just to go to History. Despite this, I feel guilty about walking on the grass every time I do it, especially when campus police is around or if I scare a squirrel or feral cat away.

I don’t expect the administration to dig up all the concrete and existing sod in order to replace the sidewalks. I only intend to raise it as an issue because I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. The people who drive those blue electric cars among the throngs of pedestrians know what I’m talking about. I see them struggling to make the sharp turns made necessary by the web of random pavement. Above all, I want to explain why I walk across the grass every day. It’s really not entirely my fault.

-Eric Trujillo, 21, Undeclared Major