Hillsdale College has a beautiful campus, but pointless yellow eyesores threaten that reputation.
The “bollards” are the pairs of bright yellow metal poles that pop up on the driving paths on campus installed last year. There are two pairs, one between the Grewcock Student Union and Delp Hall and another between the union and the Dow Leadership Center.
Security told the Collegian last year that the bollards protect students, but they don’t. Supposedly, cars driving around campus may hit students, but security only puts the bollards up at night when the pedestrian traffic is lowest. The bollards pop up when all the students lay down.
And even when security puts the bollards up, they don’t lock them. Students can easily push them over any night of the week. Sometimes they do. The bollards protect students from any menacing criminals who want to rampage across campus in their vehicles, but are afraid to push over a yellow pole. Further, there’s plenty of open grass to drive around either pair. The bollards by Delp Hall have enough empty grass for an 18-wheeler to pass through easily.
It’s not as if the college is against vehicles driving on campus. Utility vehicles and maintenance trucks regularly wheel down the paths. Security drives the path more frequently than Hillsdale’s bloated squirrel population walks it.
Students walk along sidewalks where cars whiz by at 40 miles an hour to get to campus, but as soon as they get on campus they need to be walled in? No.
Campus is well-kept with manicured lawns dotted with trees and peaceful sitting areas. Contrast this with the metal obstructions, which are bright yellow, except for the rusted out parts exposing an industrial gray metal. You can even see the yellow blights on Google Maps’ satellite images of the college.
It’s not just a matter of beauty. It’s a matter of competitiveness. Students consider campus beauty when choosing a school. Princeton Review even picks the most and least beautiful campuses every year. Hillsdale wants desperately to compete with the most prestigious schools, to be seen as the conservative answer to the Ivy League. Schools like Princeton and Harvard have gorgeous architecture and inspiring campuses. A few bollards don’t destroy Hillsdale’s chances, but it is not the Ivy League thing to do. Many small changes add up to a less beautiful campus.
Distinguished visitors and donors visit often. They want to see a beautiful place of liberal learning, but when walking from the Dow hotel parking lot to the Union they have to step over some odd pieces of metal and wonder, “What are they for?” This is a fair question. Sadly, the answer is not rewarding.
The bollards are a classic case of needing to seem like something is being done. It’s like eighth-grade algebra when you don’t know the answer to a test question, but you scribble some little calculations on the side of the page, draw a graph and guess what? You get half credit because the teacher felt like you tried and must have understood something if you went through all that work. In the same way, this is a case of trying to do something that seemed to make everyone safer but actually did nothing.
The bollards, though a well-intentioned attempt at security, have failed. They have to go.
