Apr 18, 2023 3 min read

The dean of students at Washington & Jefferson College urged drivers and pedestrians to be alert to their surroundings after a student was hit by a vehicle last week and suffered minor injuries.

W&J’s campus has three crosswalks with flashing lights and a chirping sound to illuminate the crosswalk paths and emit noise to warn approaching drivers.

The crosswalks are motion-activated, and are highly visible both during the day and at night in order to improve safety.

“Unfortunately, even with those measures, things can happen. We caution students to be mindful when you’re walking on the street, to put those cellphones down and be looking around,” W&J Vice President of Student Life and Dean of Students Eva Chatterjee-Sutton said Monday. “And we hope people will be mindful and attentive when driving through campus. We always appreciate when we have thoughtful drivers.”

Every day, hundreds of students cross the busy city roads that cut through the campus, but they can’t automatically assume that vehicles are going to stop for them. The student who was hit last week while crossing the road at a lighted crosswalk on East Beau Street was not distracted, Chatterjee-Sutton said.

The lighted, sound-emitting crosswalks were installed in 2018, in the wake of two students being struck by automobiles on the W&J campus. Chatterjee-Sutton said crosswalks existed, but at that time they didn’t include light and sound.

Two of the pedestrian crossings are located on East Beau Street, while a third is on Wheeling Street. There is a brick crosswalk with signage on Lincoln Avenue, in front of Rossin Campus Center.

Chatterjee-Sutton said the campus includes one-way streets, so students must be alert for wrong-way drivers.

“We’re surrounded by one-way streets. You’d assume people shouldn’t be coming from a certain direction, but it happens with more regularity that you’d expect,” said Chatterjee-Sutton.

According to Pennsylvania’s vehicle code, drivers must yield to pedestrians crossing the street in a crosswalk. If a pedestrian enters the crosswalk, they always have the right of way.

According to Washington police, the student was walking across the street at about 9:15 a.m. on Thursday when he was hit by the SUV. City police, the W&J Campus and Public Safety Office, and Washington Ambulance & Chair responded to the incident. The student declined medical treatment.

Police said no charges were filed against the driver.