LET THE KIDS WALK

Robert Rebuffatti 

Comm 250

 Let The Kids Walk

The University of Nebraska- Lincoln is suffering from a transit crisis. A crisis that is at the concern of the student body, university staff, and Lincoln citizens. This conflict of interest most directly effects the student body and discriminates students from varying colleges and majors that they have selected. Some students are marginalized and separated from the two common learning areas, City and East Campus. The effected crowd is students enrolled in the college of journalism and mass communication. All other buildings can be found encapsulated inside the radius of the university, outlined by educational owned building with the exception of Anderson Hall. 

I, the main promoter and activist for this pending issue reserve the right as a reliable source of validity. As a full time student enrolled in their junior year of educational status, I have a major in Advertising and two minors within the Business and Horticulture programs. With this background in multiple university programs, I have witnessed the wide spectrum of landscaped areas provided on both City and East Campus for the convinces of students. However, I have not experienced this on my journey to Anderson Hall. 

The remote location of the building proves to be a safety hazard, inconvenience, and institutional eye sore. Anderson Hall is isolated in an island of shame that corners Q and 14th street. Half of this location is engulfed with commercial business that is not N-Card compatible. Not only does this not profit the university, it actually causes the university to lose income, students, and a traditional and educational expansion. This provides the university an opportunity to expand its network bubble in educational standings, social influence, political weight, and credibility. 

These advertising students are treated as a minority, simply because of their major selection. Traffic not only proves to be an eye sore but a major safety hazard. Q street is a main street that outlines the main body of the Nebraska Campus. There are corporate buildings that interfere with the university boarders and provide heavy traffic flow. This traffic flow is what defines the main safety hazard. This safety hazard serves as a time inconvenience as well as an individual inconvenience. 

Q street is an interruption of education, and a disturbance to our commons. It kills the flow of education by hiding buildings behind a cloud of smog and coffee crazed drivers ready to honk and innocent students. 

To represent the struggle that the minority faces on every weekday, I will preform a civil act that obstructs normalized students from their habitual walking pattens. Located near the City Campus Union, there is a row of trees that serves as the aorta for this campus. This pathway directs the union to the educational side of campus where most classes are located along side recreational buildings. These trees that enclose the concert path is easily one of the pathways that sees the most footprints on a daily basis. For this reason, I chose this location to hang up my signs. 

These signs read “Let the Kids Walk” in references to Q street being dangerous and hard to cross. White printer paper was the backing for the poster, and they where hand written. I am aware the the hand written aspect may look sloppy, however, I believe to a high degree that it will speak to the individual and provoke more of an action as a result. The posters where then stapled to individual trees from varying angles for everyone to see. To objective of this was to stimulate the crowds thought before they came across the obstacle. Each tree had an average of three posters stapled to their exterior. From the varying angles each poster still read the same message of, “let the kids walk”. The only variations from poster to poster was whether it was horizontal or vertical.    

The clocks read a time of seven thirty. This is a commonly referenced time regarding classes at eight in the morning. For this reason I chose this time to target people going to class at seven thirty. I figured that the display would not last past the first round of classes. In this reason is why it was assumed to be pointless to target another group of students. Trees to the left and right where covered in posters to obtain the highest and most effective result. 

I decided against the ribbon string in this area during the climax of the campaign. While I was hanging up my posters I came to a daunting realization. Bikers commonly use this path, almost just as much as pedestrians walking. Bikers traveling after the time of my installment would be blind to such political activism until the sun rose. With the assumption that close lining a biker might bring on legal affairs with the university, I quickly hung up half of the posters in this location and went to plan b. 

Plan B was to keep the posters that where already in place, however, spread the effected area. Rather than concentrating the event to this one pathway, I decided to string up the surrounding stair cases of the buildings near the initial pathway of trees with the posters. 

This is a safer alternative but takes out the component of the traffic swept street. 

The first location was that of the museum. This stair case was separated into three sections. One down the middle, leading straight to the door, one found at the left wing and the right.  The ribbon was tied and wired through out the entirety of the stair case. Three hundred and fifty yards of ribbon located at each stair well.   

Around the stairwells I cluttered the ground with the remaining half of the poster I previously made. I hoped that the stairwell maze would bring recognition to the posters for the audience to further realize the hashtag. 

With this information present in the students head it was expected to stimulate curiosity. The curiosity would prompt the audience to search the hashtag on social media. Hopefully, somewhere down along the line they would come across the twitter account made for this event. 

https://twitter.com/letthekidswalk
The twitter account had referenced to popular memes that would hopefully go viral across the university campus.  For example:   

  

In retrospect, it this campaign would have been more effective if there was an obstruction of walking placed multiple times throughout the semester. I over estimated the weight and influence that the ribbon had on the students. With this information now,  I would like to do an event like this once every two weeks to improve the experiment.