John Peters owes this entire school a huge apology. NIU has proven that it fails at preparing for the aftermath of any emergency situation, particularly that of winter.

This morning I was waiting for the bus outside Montgomery Hall, and the Circle Bus drove right past me and eight other students, while not even slowing down because it was full. This is the seventh time this has happened to me in the last month-and-a-half, and on 12 other occasions I’ve had to wait in excess of 45 minutes for a bus that, according to our transport provider Veolia, hits each stop every 30 minutes (but most students will tell you that it is usually closer to 15 minutes). Today’s event forced me to walk back to the Stevenson dorms, down sidewalks that hadn’t seen the touch of sidewalk salt, resulting in me falling and resulting in the largest bruise I’ve ever had.

Why can’t we afford buses or salt? Well, Veolia has had a bunch of advertisements for hiring drivers, so maybe we don’t have enough, which means that they have bad management or poor wages and we need to find a new transportation provider. However, I think it’s fairly obvious that it’s more important for Peters to spend $40 million to destroy Cole Hall, and plenty more money on security guards all over the campus that serve no purpose. Are the security guards supposed to prove to us that another tragedy like this can be prevented? It lasted two minutes! The only thing we could have done to prevent this situation was if Blagojevich had the common sense to realize that being on psychoactive medication, having your parents admit you to a mental institution, and being dishonorably discharged from the military are all warning signs that scream ‘don’t give this person a gun for any reason.’ How does showing my OneCard to a security guard when I enter the dorms prove that I’m not armed to the teeth? And yet, I’m stuck eating Stevenson food because I’m not allowed in Grant or Douglas, but the Housing and Dining department still posts ads in Stevenson for special dinners over there that I’m not allowed to go to.

I’m not asking that Peters gets fired for not handling this well; I’m asking he gets fired for having no common sense.

Byron Olson
Junior, Biology

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