The Case Against One-way Stairwells

You’re running late. Maybe your alarm didn’t go off, or you couldn’t find a parking space, or the line at Dunkin’ was longer than usual. Whatever the reason, you run into the building with just minutes to spare. You are about to turn into the stairwell to go up to the 700s when you see a big sign on the wall that says “One way”. Now you realize that you have to walk all the way down the hall, go up a different staircase, only to walk right back to where the other staircase would have let you out. And now you’re late.

With all the craziness of last year, one-way staircases were a necessity, but now that things have calmed down we were finally able to get rid of the inconvenience that they were. With the one-way stairs, the distance between classes practically doubled and you had to plan out an intricate route that included laps around the school. People struggle enough to get to class on time as it is -- especially given that our passing periods are now back to being only five minutes -- so adding the extra hurdles one-way staircases present would make it practically impossible. In addition, the added confusion of having to map out extraneous routes to the gyms, art classes, or simply your next classes, would add a layer of stress that is unnecessary.

While you could make the argument that the traffic flows smoother in the stairwells when they’re just one-way, you have to consider the trade-off you’re making. There would have to be longer passing time to allow people to make it to and from classes on time, which would mean that classes have to be shorter.

What this school needs is a return to normalcy, which includes going back to our ways of crowded stairways.