Facilities Removes the Terence Donaghoe Parking Lot Stairs

At the start of this academic year, students came back from their summer vacation to see that the facilities team removed the stairs in the Terence Donaghoe Parking Lot. The student body has since expressed frustration with the removal because of the steep hill they have to walk up now. This situation has sparked questions as to why the stairs were taken down in the first place, whether the stairs will be rebuilt, and if they are being replaced in the future, when will that happen?

Grass is growing where the stairs were removed

Students returned to campus for the new year to see that the TDH Lot stairs were gone and that facilities have already begun planting grass over the stairway’s location, so many are left wondering if they will ever be replaced. The stairs in the TDH Lot experienced high foot traffic due to the parking lot being located at the bottom of an extremely steep hill. Sophomore Resident Assistant on campus, Jazz Daughtrey, believes that the stairs being gone poses potential danger to students who use the TDH Lot. She stated, “During the winter, that hill is extremely dangerous” and “There have been multiple occasions where I have had residents falling down the hill, including myself.” Jazz’s thoughts on the matter align with the opinions of the majority of Clarke University’s student body residents.

Most of Clarke’s students are very frustrated about the TDH Lot stairway removal; many are curious about why they were removed in the first place, and they want to know if Clarke will ever build new stairs in the near future. When asked about why the TDH Lot stairs were removed, Clarke’s facilities team said, “The stairs were removed because of mold damage.” Furthermore, due to age, it was getting to a point where the stairs were about to be too dangerous for students to use, so they tore them down over the summer break. The facilities team was then asked if they planned to replace them; they said that replacing the stairway is “not in the budget” for this year.

Jazz Daughtrey's reaction to the facilities team’s comments was that she believes the stairs should be rebuilt as soon as possible as they “made things a lot easier” on students walking to and from their vehicles in the TDH Lot. Additionally, she stated that she and other students “spend a lot of money to be here” and she “doesn’t understand how tuition has been raised, but they keep removing stuff on campus” and offering no replacement for seemingly anyof the removed resources.

Facilities hopes to be able to rebuild the stairway in future years, and to do it sooner rather than later if they can. However, as for right now, it does not look like they are going to have the ability to do it in this academic year.