Maybe some of your remember earlier this year when SFU released this year’s addition to its annual April Fool’s gag — a YouTube a video depicting hallway ‘traffic’ police, separating and maneuvering distracted texters through the ‘slow’ lane, while urging those without phones through the fast lane. The video showcased an elaborate set-up, with pylons, brightly coloured traffic signs, and a highway speed monitor.
The actors cited texting while walking as the main cause for hallway accidents and injuries; an irrefutable relation to highway traffic. Lack of attention sometimes leads to severe consequences.
Nonetheless, the video gave me a laugh. I remembered the odd time I’d accidentally ‘crashed’ into somebody while traversing the AQ. I tend to walk quickly — this is a subconscious feature of the 1993 “model ‘Adam’;” I was unfortunately manufactured with only two gears, running and walking very fast. This makes my head-on collisions a little more catastrophic when I become part of the digital roaming dead (or driving dead, in this case).
I then realized that hallway collisions aren’t actually that much of a joke. Universities in Utah, China, Belgium, Philadelphia, and who knows where else, have now started to paint ‘traffic’ lanes on their campus floors. The University of Nevada, in particular, is attempting to give pupils a choice of speed: whether to run, walk, or text as they move from one place to the next.
First, I find it humorous that the slowest lane is actually labelled as ‘text;’ a lovely sentiment to our anxiety-ridden, self-absorbed, smartphone generation. Here guys, you can have the super slow lane!
But turning the tables, I think it’s pretty sad that universities fall prey to unnecessary carelessness and narcissism. In other words, the U of N shouldn’t be responsible for the ways students choose to behave as they walk around campus. For some reason, many of us can’t seem to tear our eyes away from our screens; like, ever.
A ‘text’ lane turns our surroundings into a hallway of shame, and I hope this isn’t a trend that sticks.
I’ll admit I’ve made a conscious effort the past couple years to break away from the digital abyss by pushing my Samsung to the bottom of my backpack before I walk around campus, but temptation is unnerving — it’s hard to resist the urge to browse through things that you’ve already seen four times that day!
Though, in all honesty, this isn’t a great excuse to be irresponsible when pushing through the crowded AQ between classes.
To paint lines on university floors reminds us exactly of this: we’re addicts, we’re selfish, and yes, we actually risk the safety of ourselves and others when we don’t watch where our feet take us. A ‘text’ lane turns our surroundings into a hallway of shame, and I hope this isn’t a trend that sticks.
It’s our responsibility to make sure our we don’t risk safety when our thumbs are having conversations. If the hall is crowded (as it most often is at SFU during the day) we’d be best off to step to the side and let other people pass while we aimlessly browse social media or engage in conversations with our friends. As grown-ups, it’s not up to the university to police how we act.
So take a personal challenge and put your phone away for these short amounts of time; liberate yourself from social media and let your mouth do the talking for once. Your eyes, rather than your feet, should guide you to your destination.
