From the first frost of the year to the first buds of spring, Park University closed off one of the stairways for students to get from the top of the hill near MacKay Hall to Copley Hall at the bottom.

It was communicated to students the stairway was closed based on its poor foundation and concerns for student safety.

However, students broke this new rule all winter by casually lifting the chain on the stairway that separates potential mountain climbers from stairway liberation.

An example of another attempt to save the students is the Park University’s Mabee Underground weight room, which athletes everywhere love to hate.

In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light”…and a weight room in the Labor Hall. And it came to pass until the floor began to give to the pressure of the weights. From there, the weights were moved into the intimate room in the underground.

Both situations have two factual aspects shadowed by two emotional aspects.

The flooring of the weight room was giving way. It was likely too heavy to maintain the burden of weight and was unsafe for students. From an emotional standpoint, the small, windowless and hopeless weight room in the underground is limited and difficult to train in.

There is a stairway – a gateway to heaven if you will – which helps students get to their uphill classes on time. This stairway has a poor foundation and is susceptible to cracking during the winter. Then comes its emotional counterpart – students want the easy out.

Rushed college students can and will climb savagely over top of each other in the case of a foundation break to get to class. A word of caution for students returning to suffer through another stair shortage: stampeding fellow students does not help make friends. Life is hard enough.

Perhaps founding a campus on a hill in 1875 wasn’t the wisest of decisions. Perhaps the ghosts of Park University past want to pick-off students one by one.

Or, perhaps, nature is trying to return to its original state – one stair and one retreating floor at a time.

Whatever the case, leadership on campus has gone to great lengths to ensure that poor, sleep-deprived students survive and make it to their graduation date.

Please, just don’t take the chained off stairs. The heart wants what it wants but perhaps we can make surviving college one of them. Don’t let campus win.