Everywhere you look at Union University, there are couples.
They can be found sitting on the same side of the tables in the Lex, taking up all of the study rooms in the library and the TV rooms in the Bowld Commons and, most common of all, lining the sidewalks outside of all the dorm buildings.
Rain or shine, snow or sleet, couples cannot be avoided.
Around bedtime, if you look out your dorm window, couples make up the perimeter and are seen exchanging goodnight hugs and “I’ll see you in the morning.”
During the day, some groups of couples set up lawn chairs on the pathway instead of moving into the vast quad that is available to all buildings.
Someone has even set up a Twitter account to display the lengths to which couples will go to spend time together on weekdays. It satirizes the problem that Union students encounter daily, having to maneuver around campus avoiding these couples.
On Fridays, it seems as if they camp out on the sidewalks waiting for the clock to strike 2 p.m. so they can charge into the room of their significant other.
It is only during open visitation hours that the campus is not run by these couples. Because open visitation hours are only on the weekends, Union should provide some solutions on weekdays.
The sidewalk could be widened so that there is enough room for both mingling couples and the passersby.
This would solve the problem of being forced to walk in the grass around these couples or the awkward eye contact that happens when a person is trying to discretely ask them to move.
These new sidewalks could even be divided into lanes like a road so that there is no confusion on where to stand and where to walk.
If Union doesn’t want to pave more sidewalks, maybe the university could designate certain areas of the sidewalk “couples only.”
There is nothing worse than trying to walk into your building when a couple is standing right in a main walkway, usually taking up more room than necessary standing right in the middle.
This would help confine all of the couples to one area so that they aren’t in front of the buildings at all hours.
Finally, if those solutions are not possible, maybe the administration could implement a campus-wide rule that if couples see a person walking on the sidewalk in their direction, they can simply step out of the way.
That won’t ruin their time together on the sidewalk; it would just make things more convenient for people just trying to get from one place to another.
