Disclaimer: This column may be funny, its ideas may be far-fetched, and I may be wasting my time writing it, but make no mistake—I am very serious, and I am addressing a very serious problem.

When I come to Whitman any time between the hours of one and four in the morning—don’t ask me what for—it takes me only a few minutes to get from my driveway to the school parking lot. When I try to get here by 7:25 a.m., it’s another story; it can take as long as twenty minutes door-to-door. It is an issue with one source: the Whittier pedestrian crosswalk.

Many students cross Whittier Blvd. at a single crosswalk in front of the school. Drivers and car passengers en route to the parking lot are required by law, and a predisposition against vehicular manslaughter, to yield to these cross-walkers. When one car pauses to let these students pass, it disrupts the flow of cars approaching the building, creating a maddening chain reaction of congestion that results in widespread first-period tardies for car commuters (sorry Mr. Garton). Fortunately, there are many ways to solve this problem.

Let me begin by addressing the obvious: why isn’t there a crossing guard in front of the school? A crossing guard would hold walkers at the sidewalk and only let them cross the street when plenty of them had built up. This sounds far preferable to the current situation in which pedestrians walk in a steady stream across the street that makes driving to school more precarious than a game of Frogger.

If the administration and MCPS don’t judge employing a crossing guard prudent, rest assured that there are many more possibilities. Two words: monkey bars. A 20-foot-tall set of monkey bars installed to traverse Whittier Blvd. would serve as an overpass that allows students to cross the street without impeding the traffic below. Sure, a student or two may fall to a messy death if his or her upper-body strength is sub-par, but, for the most part, this solution is flawless. Heck, it might even stretch out diminutive students to a normal height!

When it comes to outside-of-the-box ideas, why stop at monkey bars? Monkey bars are nice if you have a light backpack and are a nimble climber, but what if you are carrying fifteen textbooks, travelling on a bicycle, holding the hand of your significant other, or all of the above? I propose a suspension bridge.

One way or another, someone needs to address the disaster that is Whittier Blvd. every morning. I’m tired of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic 100 yards away from school. Believe it or not, I’m even tired of being late to first period. Pedestrian traffic at the Whitter crosswalk is a serious, serious problem. It deserves an immediate, and at least somewhat serious, solution.