Safety concerns on Chancellors Walk

     At UNC Wilmington, the simple act of travelling to and from classes on the school’s famous Chancellor’s Walk is a practice in which all students must learn to use caution.  Often heavily trafficked with students walking, biking, or riding longboards, safety risks on the walk are many. The numerous modes of transportation inevitably lead to the occasional collision.

Students like Jerri Porter who prefer to walk to class attest to Chancellor’s Walk’s tendency to be “very, very busy.”  Pedestrians like Porter must do their best to stay out of the way of students on bikes and longboards.  Porter, who testifies to witnessing her friend get hit as well as having been almost hit by bikers and skateboarders herself, has her own method of attempting to avoid such encounters. 

“I put my headphones in so I won’t move at all and they will just dodge me,” she said.

Similarly, students who bike or longboard to class must do all they can to avoid walkers moving at much slower paces. 

“Any time between 9:30 and 1 it’s pretty crazy,” says UNCW student Nick Selgren,.

Selgren has almost collided with pedestrians on numerous occasions while longboarding on Chancellor’s Walk. 

“[People] aren’t paying attention, they’re listening to their iPods …You’re coming up from behind people and they just don’t care to look behind them before they turn,” he said.

Safety on Chancellor’s Walk has become a widely held concern for UNCW’s student body, with even an “I got hit on Chancellor’s Walk” facebook page having been created.  Many students have offered their own suggestions for making Chancellor’s Walk safer, such as urging others to stay on the right side of the walk or requesting the addition of a bike lane.

Campus Police Officer James Watson has a few proposed solutions of his own to help with this problem.  According to Officer Watson, the biggest problem is that there is no written set of rules.

“There are no written directives or laws on how people are supposed to operate, and you see the bikes and skateboarders going wherever,” said Watson.

Watson finds that texting is another distraction for students walking on campus. 

“Students would walk off a cliff and they wouldn’t even know it,” he said. 

Watson believes that something must be done overall to solve this problem, as educating new freshman every year in how to use Chancellor’s Walk has become something of a “never ending battle.”  There is a task force on campus that is currently looking into improving the walk by possibly adding a bike-only lane on the far right side to separate the wheels from the pedestrians.  However, until such measures are taken, the responsibility of safe use of Chancellor’s Walk lies entirely within the hands of the student body.