So, my roommate was hit by a car last week.

She’s OK, but it’s not like the person who hit her would know that.

The driver, who was looking the other way, simply drove off after hitting my roommate, who during the day, was running across the crosswalk near the entrance of Coleman Hall.

A couple of people behind the absent-minded driver stopped to see if my roommate needed a ride anywhere and if she was alright, but the person who actually hit my roommate didn’t even bother.

My roommate was hit in the hip with a car. Thankfully she didn’t fall because if she had, the car would have done much more damage in its passing than it already had.

Are people seriously this rude, and are drivers really this careless?

We’re on a college campus here, where the pedestrians undoubtedly have the right of way. It states in chapter four of Eastern’s Safety Manual that pedestrians have the right of way at all crosswalks.

Prior to my roommate’s run-in with the car, I noticed something else about the drivers on campus; they’re in too big of a hurry to let anyone in line.

I was returning from a class trip last week with my professor and classmate, and we were trying to leave Coleman’s parking lot after dropping someone off at class.

Well, with all of the road blocks on Seventh Street, Fourth Street has become somewhat busier and was especially busy on this day. The line to leave Coleman winded around the small lot, and the wait at the stop sign was even longer.

However, there were breaks in the line on Fourth Street that would have eased some of the tension in the Coleman parking lot, had the drivers heading north on Fourth Street made enough room at the Coleman exit for the drivers at the Coleman stop sign to get out onto the street and go south.

But no.

For each car that came to the stop sign in the Coleman lot, it took about 10 cars from the line that was backed up from the stop signs at Fourth Street and Grant Avenue to make enough room for people to leave the lot.

The people backed up from the Fourth Street and Grant Avenue stop signs were obviously not going anywhere for a while, and letting the Coleman cars head south, or north at that, wouldn’t have cost them more than 30 seconds of their time. The gesture would have made the parking lot much easier to get around, for both drivers and pedestrians.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in a busy day and easy to not always notice the people waiting to cross the street (and sometimes to even see them while they are crossing the street when it’s dark), but try thinking of how much time you’re really saving by rushing through the crosswalks while your fellow students wait in the rain to cross the street or by hanging bumper-to-bumper when trying to get to that stop sign.

Try putting others before yourself; it would become a lot easier for all of us to get around on campus.