It is hardly news to Brenda Wynne, a waitress at Charlie's Kitchen, that the corner right outside of the Eliot Street eatery is dangerous.

"Cars come spinning around that turn and every few years someone gets hit there," says Wynne. "They should put in stop signs or lights or something, I really have to watch myself there."

And when Rohit Chopra '04 arrived at Harvard, he was struck by a lack of pedestrian walk signs like the ones that had populated his native Philadelphia. After being elected to the Undergraduate Council, he quickly moved to pass a bill earlier this past fall to make the Square a safer place.

"[The bill] was something that would virtually have no student opposition and could potentially save a life. [This problem] was something I have noticed on the streets. I think everyone has," he says.

For both Wynne and Chopra, the Square, with its Byzantine traffic circles, fast drivers and masses of students was an accident waiting to happen.

And in the aftermath of a Dec. 17 accident where a car fatally struck Shira Palmer-Sherman '02 outside of Charlie's Kitchen, the abstract fears of hundreds of Square pedestrians suddenly materialized.

But while the campus mourned the passing of Palmer-Sherman, the harder questions of implementing safer pedestrian solutions are still struggling with red tape in both the University and the City.

A Council Resolution