Uneven pavement and large cracks in sidewalks have caused injury among students, faculty and staff around campus.
Zillah DeLaughter, a staff member in the English department, fractured her left foot in June when she stepped off the curb at Allen Hall.
“There’s about six or seven inches between where the curb is and the blacktop starts, and it’s very uneven where they ended it,” DeLaughter said.
Fred Fellner, Facility Services assistant director, said he constantly is getting complaints about hazardous grounds on campus. Just as often, he is making repairs.
“[The University] spends around $100,000 every year fixing cracks and replacing deteriorating sidewalks,” Fellner said. “I have a comprehensive report that I’m working through to eliminate all trip hazards on campus.”
He said significant hazards could be anything from an inch and a half or larger. He hopes to fix the list of hazards within 12 months.
“The campus is a mess as far as surfaces,” Fellner said. “You can go anywhere and find a problem area.”
He said a number of reasons have caused and contributed to the poor shape of walking areas at the University, such as natural causes or bad patch jobs from previously attempted repairs.
“We have expansive clay soils and they move a lot when saturated,” Fellner said. “People are also driving vehicles and equipment, such as cranes, over the sidewalks and it breaks it up.”
Fellner said another contribution to trip hazards is the University’s underground facilities, such as steam and electrical lines.
“There are trenches where people have installed new equipment, or there are places where someone didn’t pay attention to a patch job,” he said.
Fellner said there are many places on campus that need repair, but the worst areas are in the Quad and around Residential Life buildings.
“The whole Quad underwent a ‘new’ project 30 years ago, and we have to redo it again,” he said. “All the joints in the sidewalk have wood expansion strips about an inch wide and they have deteriorated over the years. Water gets in those cracks and gets under the foundation.”
He said Facility Services is using new methods to prevent concrete slabs from buckling or separating by using key-joint expansion methods. This involves a piece of metal underneath the foundation that locks slabs of concrete together, Fellner said.
He said slabs can separate when a root grows underneath and lifts one up, or a soil can become dehydrated and cause one to sink. He said the key-joint procedure will not stop foundation from rising or falling, but it at least will keep things even.
Fellner said he also will train someone to use a new concrete grinder with a carbide tip, a $5,000 machine used to repair cracks.
Making the campus as safe as possible can get costly, Fellner said, and financing comes in various ways.
“We get $400,000 from the $1 football ticket increase, and that is spent mostly on sidewalk projects,” he said. “We also get money from individual auxiliaries like Art Goulas at the Student Health Center, who uses his own budget money to keep up those sidewalks.”
Michael Durham, director of occupational and environmental safety at Campus Safety, said the concrete on campus is not designed for heavy vehicles, especially in wet weather. He has received calls about problem areas and has done repairs before.
“Anytime someone drives on a sidewalk it might get broken,” Durham said. “Most of the breakage occurs because of wet weather.”
Fellner said these type of hazards are safety issues and are dealt with immediately when reported. People can report any safety hazard by calling Facility Services at 578-3186.