It’s easy to get lost on the UCSC campus. Roads meander along the contours of the hills, and often devolve into dirt paths, which may be great for hiking, but are hardly friendly to the underbelly of a car. “It’s more like finding your way around Yosemite than a campus,” says the school’s Director of Transportation Larry Pageler. For all the rest, it is like finding your way to Schrute Farm on The Office: “Turn left at the big tree, take 62 paces, and turn right. If you smell bear droppings you have gone too far.”
While this can be fun, especially with new students and unwanted guests, the fact that only 30 percent of the campus’s streets and roads are named can also pose a problem for people with valid reasons to want to get somewhere fast, like emergency services, who rely on GPS, even though the campus maps are incomplete.
That is why the university has decided to name all of its roads and paths. For now, they are using boring names that say where the road goes or what appears along it. There is no Road to Terabithia or Perdition, nor is there a Sesame Street or a Street Named Despair. There is, however, a Ranch View Road and a College Eight Road. So far. Over time, it is likely that the roads will be renamed in honor of famous faculty members or donors. Until then, people driving through the campus will have to get used to bland suburban names. At least that’s better than the Street with No Name that they’ve dealt with until now. Read more at the <a href=" http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_16383344″ title=”Santa Cruz Sentinel”>Santa Cruz Sentinel.
