With the winter season upon us, snow is something that we are now living with.
For some students who live along Park Street and University Avenue, an overnight snowstorm means having to trudge through unplowed sidewalks to get to morning classes.
Often these are the last sidewalks to be plowed, likely because neither the school’s facilities department nor the village of Canton’s Department of Public Works will take full responsibility for them.
“The village of Canton plows the public sidewalks,” said Marcus Sherburne, the assistant director of grounds and campus support at SLU.
Sherburne believes that the school’s grounds services group is not responsible for the clearing of snow from the sidewalks that run along Park Street and University Avenue. Despite that, “if they have not shown up by 8 a.m., we will clear them,” he added.
Brien Hallahan is the superintendent for the village of Canton’s Department of Public Works. “As per the village code, the sidewalks are the responsibility of the homeowner,” said Hallahan. The village code states that, although the village owns a sidewalk plow, homeowners are still responsible for clearing the sidewalk along their property.
Both Hallahan and Sherburne claim that if the other organization does not clear the sidewalks along Park and University, that their own employees will plow them.
This is little consolation to the students that must struggle through the snow to their destinations before either organization has plowed the sidewalks.
Kira Delhagen ’21 lives at 48 Park St. and often must leave the house early to get to work at the Bookstore.
“The first snow of this year, I had work at eight o’clock and there were four or five inches of snow on the ground that had not been plowed,” said Delhagen. “I was a few minutes late because it took me longer to get to work.”
“I’ve walked through three inches of snow before,” said Andrea Travis-Millet ’21, another student who lives in a theme house along Park Street. “It was pretty annoying because there was slush on the bottom and that makes things more slippery.”
Travis-Millet has also experienced the sidewalk along the university side of Park Street being cleared, but not the other. Traveling to class can be dangerous, as well as inconvenient, for students when the sidewalks aren’t plowed.