As a student at the University of Rochester, who is herself paying the university a substantial sum of money to attend here, I think removing the bridge would be one of the worst decisions that could be made by the administration.
I am all for attending a safe university, but I do not wish to be living in a bubble. I walked over that bridge four days a week for two and a half months last summer in order to get to and from my internship. Over the course of the summer, I met such an array of wonderful people who live and work in the 19th Ward and Sector 4–people from whom I learned a great deal. There is a point at which we all must realize that we cannot simply be students in the classroom. There is such a wealth of information and experience to be found among other people, even among those that so many want to push aside or ignore.
I strongly disagree with the notion that there is or should be a sharp division between college life and life “in the real world”. Ignoring the problems faced by many in our community (and Rochester is our community as long as we are attending this university) will not make them go away. I see that bridge as an essential link to a wonderfully diverse community (which is rich in ways our tuition money could never buy), and as a critical component of our education, not only as university students but also as active participants in the world in which we live. To remove that bridge would be to turn our backs on our community, and that is never the right answer.
Joyelle Muckerheide (2004)(jm009j@mail.rochester.edu, 4-0509)
