Editorial : University tours should include Marshall Street

Tour guides must include major points of Syracuse University’s nuclear campus on high school student tours. But few less important structures may give prospective students an element of community in the stark winter months.

The typical tour starts from the administration building at Crouse-Hinds Hall, winds through the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, on to the Carrier Dome, back through the Quad and past E.S. Bird Library. But Marshall Street sees student traffic regardless of the temperature. Marshall serves as a visual of the intersecting aspects of campus life and the city: school spirit, student recreation and the sadness of Syracuse poverty.

This is not to take away from the essential buildings and monuments on campus that directly relate to academics. But a hint of the energy on campus that can sometimes hide within the knee-length jackets escapes the winter lull along Marshall. The street has historical elements of its own, decades-old pizza stores and restaurants worth highlighting.

The student traffic on that staple street provides a lot more truth to student life today than wistful anecdotes from a time when the front doors to Carnegie Library once opened.