A local university is offering a seminar this fall that teaches students how to cross the street.

The first unit covers the curb. The second unit covers the other curb. The material between the two curbs comes in the second half of the term, after the add/drop deadline.

The required text is the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which governs every traffic signal in the country. Students learn that the white figure is officially the Walking Person and the orange hand is officially the Upraised Hand. They also learn that the manual times the flashing hand for someone walking three and a half feet per second. Students who walk slower than that are asked to see the instructor during office hours.

Rhode Island law requires drivers to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The seminar spends a week on this. The next week covers what happens after that.

The midterm is held at the corner.

Several students asked whether they could look at their phones while crossing. The instructor said that was a separate course, and it was full.

The seminar does not cover why. The why first appeared in print in March 1847, in a New York monthly, The Knickerbocker, and the chicken in it was crossing a street, not a road: "Because it wants to get on the other side." The instructor considers the matter settled and does not take it in section.

Asked what students would be able to do by the end of the seminar, the university said they would be able to reach the other side. Asked whether they could do that before, the university said it was not in a position to comment on prior learning.