Imagine this: it’s the second day of class and you’re walking down the stairs in Rockwell Hall.

It had recently snowed, so the stairs are wet.

You are too cheap to buy snow boots, so you wear slippers instead. You meet the fourth stair up and meet your defeat. You slip, your body skipping two stairs and then landing on the last one. You hit your tailbone directly and pain fills your body. Holding in the tears, you walk to Weigel Health Center, hoping for some help. They give you ibuprofen for the pain. You go on about your day, forever holding onto the railing after that.

Welcome to my slippery memory from January.

Walking in the winter can be treacherous. We all have slipped, catching ourselves midair. Some of us have slipped and fallen on our knees, maybe even on our backsides. Regardless, it hurts. Physically and mentally, since people are almost always around to witness it.

SUNY Buffalo State can’t help the weather, of course, but sometimes, it runs through our minds on whether they salt the sidewalks enough. Or if they focus on the stairs and linoleum floors in the classroom buildings.

Now, of course, I appreciate the maintenance on campus and all of the work that they do. Although snowy times call for slippery stairs… and almost always someone is going to fall.

It varies from messages in my staff group-chat saying, “be careful walking outside of the building because there’s black ice,” to instances with a fellow student, Robbie Cregg, informing me that she also has slipped by Rockwell Hall, but outside instead. Cregg says that an entrance of Rockwell Hall is barely ever salted, creating ice that isn’t noticeable to the eye.

Walk to class and watch your step. You never know where the ice may be on the sidewalk or the stairs. Good luck out there.