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Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Picture this, you are running late for class in the time remaining until your morning lecture is dwindling fast. So you start running through piles of Chicago, snow until suddenly you approach it.
Speaker 2 00:00:15 Wait
Speaker 0 00:00:18 A place best described by an overwhelming sense of dread and anguish. The light of course turns around the second you arrive. You wait staring at the time on your phone to cross the street helpless, unable to even jaywalk. If this sounds familiar to you, you have probably tried to cross the Sheridan road crosswalk near the arch. Today. I took a trip to this infamous campus spot to see how Northwestern students feel about the location from w Nur news. I'm Margo mule. You're listening to news at six
Speaker 4 00:00:53 It's. Usually I'm waiting way too long. Uh, and I really want the light to change, but there's also too many cars to jaywalk.
Speaker 0 00:01:01 That was CELs a McCormick freshman, despite living on north campus. Sealy said that she interacts with the crosswalk quite often because she frequently ventures to target in downtown Evanston for food and dorm essentials. Sea's background also makes the crosswalk especially difficult.
Speaker 4 00:01:18 I'm from New York. So I'm used to jaywalk. It's definitely hard to just kind of stand the Aaron. Wait,
Speaker 0 00:01:24 I then stopped another student after they successfully cross Sheridan road. Third year being student Adam Clayton.
Speaker 5 00:01:29 I think it's, you know, a little stressful, cause you never know if you can make it or not.
Speaker 0 00:01:32 Afterwards, I ventured a bit higher up on Sheridan road and approached students who had just jaywalked before the arch intersection to hear why they made that decision. One student, Sam Goel, a McCormick sophomore was spotted pizza in hand, one asked, he said the pizza inspired him to jaywalk.
Speaker 6 00:01:47 It's gonna get cold. So every second counts
Speaker 0 00:01:50 <laugh> Sam went on to describe the crosswalk as terrifying and gave students hoping to cut it off early. A piece of advice
Speaker 6 00:01:57 Look right and left carefully <laugh> before you go. And then hopefully I don't get hit.
Speaker 0 00:02:01 Another jaywalking student was Jacob bra, a C MBA candidate. However, Jacob, unlike Sam said the crosswalk did not impact his decision to jaywalk.
Speaker 7 00:02:11 I mean, I knew the crosswalk was there, but uh, I don't know. I, I didn't think too much about it and I don't have any issues with it really. I mean, pretty ambivalent towards the crosswalk as a whole.
Speaker 0 00:02:22 Instead Jacob said he just crosses a street. Any point he can yet, not everyone expressed an apathetic attitude or disdain for the crosswalk, such as made freshman Evelyn Drisk school.
Speaker 8 00:02:33 I also just really love the nostalgic vibe of the crosswalk. It feels very important to the experience of Northwestern. I feel like crossing that every day reminds me of how awesome it is to be a Northwestern student.
Speaker 0 00:02:45 Evelyn also appreciates the social aspect of the crosswalk.
Speaker 8 00:02:48 And I also really like it because it's a place on campus where you're guaranteed to see people and seeing people on campus makes me really happy.
Speaker 0 00:02:55 Another student like Evelyn appreciated the crosswalk. Her name is Vanessa vital and she's a callant da student from Peru.
Speaker 9 00:03:02 I felt safe <laugh> I came from a country in which traffic is not that good. So I feel here that here I can like normally cross the, the road without any problem. And I was also lucky because I didn't needed to wait any time because it was like a already three, four passing for us.
Speaker 0 00:03:22 Some students, however, have developed a mathematical approach to the crosswalk, such as Weinberg freshman, Matthew Brit Webb.
Speaker 10 00:03:28 The thing is the journey starts before I actually get to the crosswalk. It's just a constant calculation. You know, if I'm heading towards Allison, then like I'm watching the, um, the signal. So if it starts to beep and I'm like towards the banners, like nearly arch, then I know I can go. But if not, then I'm just gonna wait. Cause I don't wanna like fill out sprint and then coming the other way. There's the second tree from the crosswalk. If I'm there by the time when it starts going off, I know that if I hurry up a little bit, that I can get there,
Speaker 0 00:03:59 It took Matthew's some time to figure out the best crosswalk approach.
Speaker 10 00:04:02 It's like a bit, I mean, a couple of like awkward chimneys that I realized I would have to run too fast to get there. You know, it's just kind of muscle memory at this point,
Speaker 0 00:04:10 But Matthew doesn't think he discovered this approach per se.
Speaker 10 00:04:14 It's definitely not something I've discovered. I'm sure this has been a thing since, since the creation of the crosswalk itself.
Speaker 0 00:04:20 Well, to Matthew, the crosswalk is all about personal choice.
Speaker 10 00:04:25 Everyone just has their own sort of relationship with that crosswalk.
Speaker 2 00:04:34 Wait.
