Imagine driving your 30 minute commute to class and not realizing the professor sent a cancellation e-mail while you were on the road.
Class cancellations, either before or after arriving on campus, have happened to sophomore commuter Catherine Maslan more than once during a semester.
“One day, I waited from 1:45 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. for a class…the professor [never showed] up,” Maslan said. “I was angry because I could have gone home three hours earlier that day.”
This is just one of the disadvantages commuting to campus poses for more than 700 students who travel to Fairfield everyday for their classes.
Commuters make up about 20% of the student population and students living on campus make up about 80%, which is shown in the University’s statistics of the full-time undergraduate resident status.
Commuters said there are things they need to worry about that residents do not need to be concerned with. For example, commuters said that they feel cut off from campus.
“[We] have to make an effort to join clubs and be social,” said commuter Elizabeth Holman. “Living on campus would make it easier to participate in extracurricular activities.”
The problem, according to Maslan, is that “many clubs meet late at night. Staying on campus all day gets boring, but driving home and then coming back later isn’t any better.”
This difficulty of being involved in campus activities helped shape local resident Courtney Winger’s decision to live on campus rather than commute.
“I was really involved in high school activities and…I felt that I wouldn’t be able to be as involved in all the things I love doing if I commuted,” said Winger, who is from Shelton.
Nevertheless, with an estimated cost of room and board of $11,270, most commuters said that the foremost advantage of commuting is that they save money.
Another way commuters save money is by not having a meal plan. Meal plan options for commuting students are either 40 board meals and $200 dining dollars, which costs $625.00 per semester, or 65 board meals and $200 dining dollars, which costs $855.00 per semester. Many of the commuters interviewed said that they do not have a meal plan due to its cost, which forces them to bring their own lunch and sometimes even dinner.
Furthermore, the recent decision to prohibit sophomores from having cars on campus does not affect commuters, which they said is another advantage. Even as freshmen, commuters are allowed to have cars on campus. Holman said that having a car on campus gives her a sense of freedom since she does not need to depend on shuttles or taxis to leave or return to campus.
“You aren’t stuck on campus when there’s nothing to do,” Holman said.
Weather has its affects on driving for commuters, sometimes turning a 20 minute trip into an hour-and-a-half journey. However, the university does “[have] some rooms available for commuter students…if [they] become stranded…due to weather,” according to the 2009-2010 commuter bulletin.
However, the cost to register a car for the 2009-2010 school year went up to $80 and commuters lost some of the parking lots they once had, such as the parking lot behind Alumni Hall.
Commuting also helps students with their specific majors.
“I am a nursing major and … [our] clinical sites are mainly…health care facilities throughout Fairfield County,” Maslan said. “If I really like one of the sites and I want to intern there over the summer, I can easily do that because I live nearby.”
Commuters also said that going home every day is a benefit—providing them with home-cooked meals, the constant support of one’s family and no possibility of homesickness. Moreover, it means privacy; commuters do not need to share bedrooms or bathrooms.
Commuters added that another advantage of commuting is becoming friends with other commuters.
“We have our own amazing group of commuter friends,” Maslan said. “We can easily hang out over breaks and in the summer because we live close by.”
Some commuters are still deciding if they will live on campus. They all agree that living on campus would make various activities easier, but money is acting as a deterrent.
Maslan is also in the process of making this decision.
“I’m debating about whether I will live on campus or commute next year,” Maslan said.
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