You'd think a late-January thumping of snow on sleepy State College would be cause for joy, excitement and fun around these parts.

I'll take "Misguided and completely off-base statements" for $200, Alex.

Pandemonium has overtaken the Penn State student population, with heavy disappointment and anger from students being lobbed at the university's administration.

Letters have been flowing in to me about this hot topic. Students on the streets and in apartments are talking about it. Even a few choice students on the fringe (of sanity, you could argue) are about one snow flake short of taking torches and battering rams to the fortified gates of Old Main.

What's behind this uproar, you ask?

Sidewalks.

From freshmen to graduates, students are in a rage about the university's "lack of care for ... students and faculty alike," as reader Regis Gaughan (senior-journalism) put it in his Jan. 28 letter to the editor.

"Sidewalks are slippery!" "There's snow on the ground and I fall because of it!" "I got splattered by a tidal wave of snow sludge when the Link drove by!"

You name it, it's been said.

The problem here is, the university is catching some unfair flack from a steaming student populace.

Now before you torchbearers come crashing through The Daily Collegian's gates in search of me, let's look at this from a realistic standpoint.

Penn State is big. It's just-a-smidge-smaller-than-Rhode-Island big.

It has a hundred different nook-and-cranny entrances and exits throughout the two miles it extends. The sidewalks that wind throughout campus extend much longer than the two-mile radius of land.

When almost 10 inches of snow is dumped upon the university and surrounding area, it presents a problem.

The campus has to be cleared for 8 a.m. classes and the rest of the school day that eventually follows. But, snow melts. Snow drifts. Snow can turn to ice.

With these inevitable variables, students slip and slide and slop around as they trek to and from class.

And through the winter whackiness, Penn State and its 900-man Office of Physical Plant (OPP) slam head-on into the campus with snow blowers, shovels, rock salt and plows, attempting to clear the walkways for students and faculty.

Sometimes workers come to campus at midnight, hours before their shifts -- as OPP personnel did early Wednesday morning. They work and they work hard.

It just seems to never be enough when the walkway behind Rackley Building isn't completely wiped clean of snow.

Why is this?

Can we students honestly expect OPP to send a worker -- who may be assigned to clear significant areas around four to five campus buildings -- up to Chambers Building, just so that he can tediously chip away at a six-inch long sliver of ice that's frozen solid on the building's walkway?

A Bobcat plow isn't going to be entirely effective when you have a swarm of East Halls freshmen waiting on the sidewalk for a Loop to whisk them to the Forum -- a whole 200 yards down the road.

You want the sidewalk clear? Then get off it.

Now, this isn't to say that I don't take issue with the odd, almost random decisions to have a two-hour delay or not that have gone on this week within the administration. "Snow emergency" usually involves some sort of danger in its context.

But the fact is, we had class four out of five days, and OPP was out there working away, clearing the debris from walkways. Do you really think the university would risk fielding more than 300 personal injury claims on its hands because some students fell on their bums?

How many of us know what it is like clearing 9.5 inches of snow from an enormous campus, when the most we've probably ever done is a porch stoop or a driveway.

The solution is simple. If you want a clear sidewalk, where you can clearly see the delicious gray-brown concrete, help out.

Get out of bed and clear that walkway. Kick that snow, smoosh it. Whatever it takes to get some solid footing.

Or better yet, watch your steps when you walk. It's not that hard -- I've become a Zen master with my delicate walking technique.

Here's hoping the next time State College gets bombarded with snow that the backlash against OPP and the university isn't as severe.

Or that the Loop gets snowed in so all of those freshmen have to walk.