There's a "culture of walking and texting" on the Utah Valley University campus, according to conversations with students, but that's not the main reason Matt Bambrough, the creative director at UVU, came up with an idea to paint a "texting lane" on a staircase leading up to the Wellness Center. According to Bambrough, it's first and foremost a design project--the texting lane was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the college-wide epidemic of kids walking around with their faces buried in their iPhones. "You have 18-24-year-olds walking down the hall with smart phones. You're almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it's something we're dealing with in this day and age," Bambrough said. "But preventing collisions isn't the reason we did it--we did it to arouse the students' attention. It's meant to be there for people to look at and enjoy." Still, when talking to Utah Valley students, it sounds like texting and walking can be quite the annoyance. Robbie Poffenberger, an assistant news editor at the UVU Review, said that most collisions he witnesses aren't human-on-human; rather, it's generally human-on-inanimate-object. "They walk into barriers--chairs on the side of the hallway, or railings," Poffenberger said, "I'm sure they're fairly embarrassed." What do we learn about the "texting lane" from the text?
It is a special campus culture in Utah Valley University. It is used to encourage the campus culture. It is painted on a staircase leading to everywhere. It is popular with students in universities.