A new crosswalk with a creative twist has been painted on LSU’s campus to improve pedestrian safety for students.

LSU professor Robert Mann and his political communication students have worked on a collaborative project across two semesters called Tigercross. Tigercross is a student-run project that aims to increase public safety regarding crosswalks on LSU’s campus.

They have made history by making the first, and only, “creative crosswalk” at LSU.

Mann teaches a capstone course within the Manship School’s political communication concentration that challenges students to find an LSU-related issue, then address and solve it within one semester.

“I’ve been teaching this class for 18 years, and every semester I have groups of students who take on some activism and try to find something they want to change on this campus for this community,” Mann said. “It’s really rare that what they set out to do actually happens.”

Mann expressed that the project came close to not being completed with how busy the spring semester can be, but his students were able to overcome it. 

“I’m usually telling students at the end of the semester, ‘Well you can learn a lot through not achieving your goals, you learn a lot through failure, you learn a lot through hardship and having people tell you no,’ and that’s a lot of my mantra,” Mann said. “But this is one of those projects where they actually got it done, so I’m really excited about it.”

One of the students from the first semester’s Tigercross team, LSU alumna Amelia Gabor, says that this project was “no small task” and that despite feeling discouraged towards the end, she is extremely proud of the testimony that was paid to LSU.

“We wanted to do something big to communicate to people that this is a walkable campus,” Gabor said. “This is one of the only walkable communities people in Louisiana will ever live in for a lot of us, and pedestrians should be prioritized. They should be safe.”

Gabor also mentioned that the team wanted the crosswalk to be visible and easily communicated to the public. 

To determine the location of the newly updated crosswalk, Tigercross analyzed pedestrian infrastructure on LSU’s campus to find the strongest and weakest spots the campus had with accidents involving pedestrians.

After working with campus planning and getting the correct funds, Tigercross was able to collaborate with local Baton Rouge artist Marc Fresh to create ideas for the image they wanted to represent LSU.

“I’m just so grateful that this could be a largely collaborative process between past and present Manship students, I think it’s not only a testament to campus and walkability, but the power of collaboration in the Manship school,” Gabor said.

Political communications senior Isabella Matthews says that she didn’t think this would ever happen due to all of the hoops the team had to go through.

“I can tell you many times I sat in bed and I was like, ‘This just is not going to happen, all of this work will not see the light of day,’” Matthews said. “Whenever I walked out and concrete was being poured, I almost cried.”

Matthews expressed that this project has been a wonderful experience and that the finished work, thanks to artist Marc Fresh, was much better than what she imagined.

Matthews also said that she hopes to see more work like this in LSU’s future. She hopes other capstone classes for Robert Mann will feel inspired by this project, or even other organizations on campus, such as student government or the Office of Multiculturalism, will take this idea and reinterpret it. 

“The design can really be anything that they want it to be, and it could be geared towards whatever problem you see on campus,” Matthews said. “Hopefully something more permanent next time but I hope that this gets enough attention that it will create some momentum for the next group that wants to do it.” 

Matthews said she would like to see this historical moment become a trend for the LSU community, something people can feel proud to take pictures of and post.

“It is a mural, it’s an art installation and I hope that it has that ‘Wow, this is really cool for my campus’ factor on people,” Matthews said. 

Visit the historic creative crosswalk made between LSU’s Student Union and Memorial Tower located on Tower Drive.