Copeland bridge out for another semester

By Ihsaan Mohamed

Picture this: you are living on an island and you think it will be a great time. The population is friendly and pretty diverse, and the house you are staying in has a gorgeous lounge. Now, imagine to get to the main part of the island, you have to walk for at least 10 minutes. In the beginning that may not be horrible, and you will even enjoy the scenery on the walk. However, after a few days that feeling will wear off and you will realize the inconvenience of that situation. This is what living in Copeland Hall is generally like.

Copeland is not the most convenient building to live in. It is one of the furthest dorms from the main part of campus, which can be quite annoying at times. It can easily take 5-10 minutes to get to classes as well as Pamplin, Watzek Library and Templeton. Depending on foot traffic it can sometimes take even longer. The reason why is we do not have a bridge connecting us to that part of campus anymore. For freshmen, we may not have known the beauty of the bridge’s efficiency, but we definitely are feeling the brunt of its loss. There is no time to goof off before class, or else you will be late, and that is not the best way to make a good impression on your professor. Or when classes are over and you just want to kick back with some friends, making the trek all the way to Copeland and then back is tiresome and draining after a long day.

The construction of the bridge is only a small percentage of the annoyance of living at Copeland. After the first few days, the noises just mold themselves into your daily routine and are hardly noticeable. But the most frustrating part is the constant push-back of the completion of the bridge. The Templeton bridge was taken down in summer 2018 after a routine maintenance check deemed it unsafe. When freshmen arrived in the fall, they were told the new bridge  would be completed in Dec. 2018. And now, it has been pushed back to mid-Jan. 2019. Each time we lost a little bit of hope for the future of the bridge. At this rate the bridge may not be completed until the Class of 2022 has graduated, officially gone into the real world, and established themselves as Lewis & Clark alumni.