There is a trap waiting behind the Culp Center for people who park in the lot on the hill. It is a crummy staircase.
There are two on that hill, but the upper one is incredibly steep. There is no landing just a bottom step and then traffic. The thing that makes this staircase so bad is that there is a very real chance of taking a tumble and falling into oncoming traffic. It is especially more frightening with bags or packages.
The staircase sports a rail, but this rail tells an ominous story: the bottom of it is very mangled. It is bent very badly, and it makes one think that it has been hit by a car in the right lane at some point in time. This sends a very bad message to the pedestrian waiting at the bottom of the stairs to cross the road. A car could fairly easily come over that little hill and duplicate the accident that bent the rail.
Crossing the roads on campus is usually not terrifying; however, this particular crossing has a particular air of danger. On week nights, most of the cars in that lot belong to people who live in the nearby dorms. Since there is very little parking around the fronts of those buildings, the lot behind the Culp Center is usually very full.
J.L. Seehorn Jr. Drive behind campus is rather dangerous, anyway. The small steep hills make it very tempting to speed, even though there are massive potholes. The speed bumps are not much of a deterrent, either, since several of them are in disrepair.
Particularly easy to speed over are the bumps that have several short ridges instead of one big one.
Pavement in the middle of those ridges is missing, making it easy for the seasoned ETSU student to fly over them with little discomfort.
The combination of the blind hill at the stair case, the severe angle of the staircase, and the make-up of the road makes it a very dangerous spot.
Something should be done about it.

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