Architects plot paths around student needs, existing trails

If the Indiana Memorial Union is perceived as the heart of campus, paved arteries and gravel veins carry IU students, faculty and staff -- the system's oxygen — to cell-like classrooms along the circulatory system of sidewalks. In fact, hundreds of miles of brick, limestone and concrete enable students and faculty numerous paths of travel on and around the capillaries of campus.\nSimilar to the PC game SimCity, IU architects imagine, research and blueprint the exact location and direction to lay sidewalks based on questions of practicality. \nAssistant Manager of Campus Division Mike Schrader believes the sidewalks provide students the most reasonable path, as straight as possible, from all campus buildings to the next. \n"We route the students where we want them to go by directing their flow of traffic. Besides the sidewalks, we use chain barriers, shrubs, trees and flower beds," Schrader said. "Students cutting paths out of the landscape has always been a problem. We do everything we can to eliminate that." \nHowever, some students determine time-efficient paths of travel to and from buildings on campus by cutting through the grass. Once students decide on a new path, the grounds department relinquishes control of the landscape to Mother Nature.\n"The dirt paths come and go, depending on the time of year," Schrader said. "(The students) might have formed a cut-through by late fall, but most trails disappear by spring."\nThe grounds department and University architects do not plan for student travel intuition; since, the quickest path between two points is always a straight line and the architect is a professional artist.\n"If we see a path cut in the grass, we can't do anything about it to save the landscape," Schrader said. "We pave the route only when we have exhausted all other means to divert the flow of student traffic."\nWhen walking around the campus community, many students and faculty stay to the right side of the sidewalk, when possible. \nPsychology professor Geoffrey Bingham speculated about the explanations for this phenomenon.\n"It's an arbitrary thing, but arbitrary things can be important," Bingham said. "It's our driving habits that form our pedestrian behaviors. All over Europe, they drive on the left side and walk on the left side." \nJunior Katie Chamberlin complicated the investigation by elaborating on Bingham's observation of a common American social norm.\n"I drive on the right side, and I walk on the right side. I hate being pushed into the road," Chamberlin said. "I don't think about it. I just usually do it." \nSophomore Michael Schachter elaborated on the complications right-side walkers face when dealing with social norm breaking left-side walkers.\n"I think people who walk on the left side are rude because they are interrupting the flow (of traffic). Especially when taking a sharp corner," Schachter said. "If you're walking on the right, and they're walking on the left, each person runs into each other."\nIn the meantime, the grounds department wants to remind students the do's-and-don'ts of sidewalk use.\n"The University does not allow students to tape messages or use sidewalk chalk," \nSchrader said. "And it would be great if students deposited their waste in the trashcans."\n-- Contact staff writer David A. Nosko at dnosko@indiana.edu .