“I come here, I go to class and then leave,” says Tiffany Blume, a senior at the University of Tampa who is part of the commuter community here at the university. Many commuters share this same sentiment, feeling they are “left out of the loop.” As a commuter, I myself also feel like we have a disadvantage when it comes to being able to have the full “college experience.” Many schools advertise this to draw prospecting students onto their campus, but unfortunately what is left out of the fine print is that these experiences seem to be available exclusively to those residing on campus. Everyone starts college with stars in their eyes, expecting it to be as magical as Hogwarts with almost as much excitement as the books and meeting just as many interesting people. For those that have to fight the morning traffic and patiently wait for the pedestrians that don’t know how to cross a street, it’s a different story. Jasmine Volel, a freshman commuter puts it simply, “It’s just hard to meet people.”
Without a good network of people on campus many of us go through the day without a word about events going on that day or week. Many commuters would like to have as much of that college experience they were promised so long ago and offer advice on how we could be better integrated into campus life and have more a presence at UT. Blume suggested commuter friendly events,
“Last year they did something only for residents, so maybe some events geared towards commuters would help.”
Volel and Blume agree that a better means of communication would help bring commuters to campus for more than just the academics.
“Maybe more meet ups of networks specifically for commuters to keep us updated on campus events,” said Volel.
“The emails work great, maybe more emails about certain events would help get the word out,” Blume suggested.
When we’re not on campus we don’t just sit at home. We have busy lives too! Work, studying, family outings, hanging out with friends and everything in between. We have active social lives, but we also want to have an active college life as well.
Katherine Lavacca can be reached at Katherine.Lavacca@spartans.ut.edu
I feel like your article is contradictory. You are complaining about not being connected to campus life, but you admit that you are never on campus. There isn’t much else the school can do for you to inform you about what’s going on on-campus for those who choose to live off-campus. You get emails (a huge on is the OSLE Weekly), they post flyers in the Commuter Lounge, if you took time to there are flyers posted EVERYWHERE around campus, you also have calendars online at ut.edu and there are plenty of pages on Facebook. This school tries so hard and does so many things to get information out to students, so it aggravates me when people complain about not getting information when they don’t take the time to first utilize the resources already there. Commuters can’t just stay on campus for classes and also feel completely involved in campus life – if commuters stay on campus longer and take a little bit of time to read about what is going on around campus with the resources I listed, then you wouldn’t feel disconnected.