At Baruch College, students are all too familiar with the overcrowded local and express elevators and escalators. It has reached a point where Baruch must address the potential safety issue that the main corridor in the William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus poses to Baruch students.

The NVC offers multiple ways to get to class. However, during “peak hours” when students leave their classes, long lines form behind elevators and escalators. Overcrowding occurs because the elevators and escalators move too slowly for students to get off.

Baruch has already implemented crowd control in the Lawrence and Eris Field Building. Students line up to enter the elevators while safety guards control the number of students entering. This system’s effectiveness raises the question as to why the NVC has not replicated it.

The NVC must implement its own form of crowd control. While it has crowd-control stanchions for entering and exiting the local elevator, there are no safety guards to steer traffic. As for the express elevators, there are no crowd-control stanchions, leading to situations where people push others to get into the elevator.

Baruch can take steps to control the crowds waiting for elevators by requiring students to line up to enter, along with having safety guards in place to limit the number of students and faculty in each elevator. The guards can also redirect students to either use the escalators or the stairs. This will create a safer environment so that students can get to their classes in a timely but safe fashion.