For the love of salt

Our entire area has been turned into a giant skating rink by Mother Nature's latest hijinx and in its infinite wisdom, Employment University decided to plow everything in such a way so as to leave a half inch of ice on everything. Well, since they did not plow the sidewalks at all, there are 2 inches of ice on those, but who's counting? When I drove in this morning, students were walking in all the roads around campus because the probability of being crushed by a sliding car was apparently less than that of cracking one's skull on the skate-walks. With ice and students everywhere, navigating to my parking lot had to be done with surgical precision. Luckily, I have been conditioned to walking on ice because both PhD City and Postdoc City were frozen wonderlands for much of the year. In addition, due to the construction on the new building next door, the university plows have decided that they should not get within 200m of anything that resembles a construction fence, so icy walkways have been the norm around the current building all winter.


Figure 1. PLS's walk from parking lot to building.

On might think that salt and sand might be a simple way to combat the problems associated with an ice coating, but Employment University believes in green energy and prefers to let the sun do that job, no matter how long it takes and how many shattered pelvises must be endured. While I have to admit that the jerk in me found comedic value in watching three students dramatically yard-sale on my short walk in (with no apparent injury, save for their egos), I do wonder who makes cost-saving decisions like not using salt and how they factor in the injuries of their clients (students) and employees into how much money they are saving.