Kent State residents voiced concern after learning some roads remain open nearby. 

“I just feel suspicious going to class without being redirected once,” one student remarked. “A clear route these days just feels a little too easy.”

With traffic cones filling up the streets, a national shortage of the color “orange” may be looming for the rest of the country. Supply chain experts are dragging their feet on confirming the crisis, but many students say the evidence can no longer be ignored. 

One OSU fraternity member expressed outrage that Kent was hogging the “last house decoration I needed to bring it all together.”

The swarms of construction are speculated to have come from Kent’s “Plan 2028,” to install 40 more potholes before the end of the decade.

With our streets increasingly dominated by cones, administrators suggest that drivers may want to start using alternative routes, such as sidewalks, lawns or “wherever feels best.”

Without the lines of cones, university officials warned that students would have to resort to using “lanes” and “common sense.”

New detours promise to not only avoid construction, but your destination entirely; offering a more introspective commute to class. Several students reported ending up in random parking lots or circling back to where they started before giving up and turning around.

Much of the situation has become a running joke, yet many do feel the changing traffic patterns make getting out around campus increasingly more difficult and time consuming. What used to be an easy drive now seems to always throw at least one twist or turn into the mix.

While our community may feel rich in traffic cones, the rest of the country grumbles. Kent State University President, Todd Diacon weighed in on the situation.

“It’s never been clearer that the cone-rich continue to get richer,” he said, “as the cone-poor communities are left with nothing but unobstructed roads,” 

While most students feel happy to have a monopoly on something other than parking complaints, a minority reported worrying about how long construction will take. Unfortunately for them, construction is not set to wrap up until after parking services run out of tickets.

Seven construction workers standing around a fire hydrant on their extended break weighed in on the situation, promising Portage County that “construction will speed up as soon as we import a couple hundred more of them cones.”

When officials were asked what exactly was being built, one responded; “Keep asking and we’ll go ahead and close main street next.”