The Maze Known as a College Campus

As a New Yorker, I'm fairly accustomed to finding my way around the city easily enough. And while I'll admit to the small difficulties every once in a while, like where exactly do I get off on the Canarsie line to transfer to the Crosstown Local (and by crosstown I mean Brooklyn/Queens); in Manhattan north of Houston is easy enough to find: The numbered streets go East/West, the numbered avenues go north/south.

I bring this up because a most amazing phenomena occurs every third or fourth day as I look out the 9th Floor window of my apartment onto Amsterdam Ave, and my college campus beyond it.

"So what is this strange occurrence?" You ask.

"Why, it's an FDNY ambulance traveling north on Amsterdam Ave., slowing as they approach the intersection and the gates to the main entrance to campus, then gradually stopping. In fact, they look....lost! You can see into their vehicle as their poor heads search the area, turning left, right, up, down. The the driver takes his foot off the break pedal and the FDNY rig pulls a U-Turn in the intersection, slowly, and starts heading back south."

Three minutes later they're back again. Same routine. They know that they're not in the right place, but probably close. They travel north this time, past the wrought iron gates, but once again, back they return, fruitlessly traveling north and south, pulling U-Turns while, I can only assume, their patient waits -- panic slowly setting in, until a campus Public Safety officer walks up to them, listens, gives directions, and off they zoom to save the day. This is where my ambulance service comes in. Our ability to excel in our service to our community of 50,000 students, faculty, visitors, and staff lies very much in the fact that we can respond directly to a location much faster than ye standard Citywide ambulance.

For example, this is a photo of a building on campus:

When yada-yada person calls into the 911 system and says, "Hi, I'm whoopie-wheepie, and I'm having a heart attack, and I'm in Shapiro Hall at The University." Citywide EMS dispatch will send all sorts of folks over, who will promptly not know where to go for several minutes at least. On the other hand, when same person calls x99 and contacts campus' Public Safety, we get the call, and we know exactly where Shapiro Hall is. In fact, we even know to ask for a clarification since there are actually TWO Shapiro Halls in existence. Thus, we hop in our truck, off and away, and establish patient contact in a much more efficient fashion than would otherwise be attainable through the municipal system.

Though this efficiency does not come easily. We require of our new Drivers that they memorize almost every location for each named building on campus, a list of about 100 places, each with it's own physical address, and some buildings with multiple addresses, as well as multiple buildings with a single address! What fun!

I've been working on a document for several months now, and tonight we are presenting it to the rest of the corps. It is essentially a standardized route listing for each possible location on campus. Here is an excerpt:

Schapiro Center
PRIMARY - Access through Peters Hall entrance on X St. Take your first left and walk past loading dock to the giant Freight Elevator. When returning to vehicle, remember that only the freight elevator reaches this level, and not the regular passenger elevators.

(2) – Access through entrance to Schapiro building on X St. requires changing elevators at Campus level. Beware, the first set of elevators are very slow.

(3) If responding to a call above the above the 7^th floor in Shapiro, try going through Mensche Hall Sky Bridge. Access is given by the 10^th floor of Mensche Hall. Use this is you like parking in the grove.

As you can see, there is a Primary route of access, and two alternatives. This may not make any sense to you, but by referencing other landmarks on the campus, this allows for a more streamlined approach to access to locations. The next steps will be distilling this down to something that anybody can use, especially for FDNY fire and EMS, NYPD, and anyone else who may be conducting emergency responses to our campus. Hopefully, in providing the municipal agencies with a listing of buildings with their corresponding physical addresses, and the best way to get into them, we can make this maze of a campus much safer (even if it means loss of business to my volunteer ambulance service)! Now, anyone know how to get FDNY to listen?