‘I will never graduate at this rate’
Marielle Messenger lives fewer than three miles away from campus – but it takes her up to an hour every day to reach her classes.
Every morning, Messenger leaves her house at least 45 minutes before class to drive just a couple exits down Interstate 81 from her home outside downtown Syracuse before parking in the lot outside Manley Field House. From there, she boards the already-packed bus coming from South Campus – if there’s room – and sprints the rest of the way to her first class.
If the traffic on the highway isn’t bad, if the bus doesn’t pull away just as she parks and if there isn’t a foot of snow on the ground, she may just make it on time. She could leave earlier, but sometimes that would mean driving on I-81 as the sun comes up.
Messenger is one of about 250 students at Syracuse University considered commuters ? full-time students who live anywhere besides campus or the East Campus area, according to the Office of Orientation and Off-Campus Programs. Though a majority (55 percent) commutes from within 11 miles of campus, some come from as far away as Cortland or Oneida counties, said OOCP program coordinator Kerry Fiesinger.
Eighty percent of commuters drive to campus, and 55 percent of them park their cars at the Manley lot, Fiesinger said. Almost everyone else parks in the West Campus lot or on the street. And though not everyone faces the same troubles as Messenger, commuter students make up an important and largely unrecognized demographic on campus, whose problems are rarely discussed or addressed.
‘Commuting just sucks a lot,’ Messenger said. ‘Just the fact that I commute makes college so much more difficult for me.’
She’s not the only one struggling to get to class on time. Senior Sean Lamb, who commutes from East Syracuse, is currently in his fifth year after transferring from State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry to SU. Fiesinger said her office did not have data about the graduation rates of commuter students, but said nationally commuters are taking an average of almost six years to graduate.
There are ways to make commuting easier, but they are more expensive. Seventeen percent of commuters, including Lamb, splurge for a parking spot on main campus to avoid taking the bus every day. Though the West Campus lot near the Brewster/Boland complex is far away from many class buildings, Lamb said it saves time and is worth the extra expense. Parking at Manley on South Campus costs $57 while the passes for West Campus cost $311.
Still, the time it takes to reach campus is just a logistical problem. Once they arrive, commuters have the inherent problem of finding a niche on campus. By not living on campus with their peers, commuters often struggle to find their identity and develop a social life in college.
Commuters Peter Finocchiaro and Kerry McDermott, Lamb’s girlfriend, both compared commuting to high school. They come to school in the morning and leave in the afternoon, therefore missing the experience of living full-time with other students.
‘The people I know aren’t really friends but more like acquaintances at the moment,’ Finocchiaro said. ‘I definitely feel like I’m missing out. The $10,000 to live on-campus is a lot, but I don’t want to be in high school anymore.’
For McDermott, the problem isn’t maintaining friendships, but enjoying the freedoms residential college students take for granted. She still lives at home with her family, and she still answers to her father.
McDermott said her father still treats her like she is in high school, and even though she is 22 and legally allowed to drink, she sometimes feels oppressed in her home when she wants to go to parties with her friends.
She frequently has to check in with her father on weekends, McDermott said, and sometimes misses out on activities her friends are enjoying ? events she would never miss if she lived on campus ? and she called commuting an extension of high school.
‘You have this dichotomy of, ‘I’m in college, I’m a big girl, I’m an adult’ and ‘I still live at home,” McDermott said. ‘It’s weird because I’m still living at home and parents are used to always questioning. But in college, people think it’s weird I have to check in with my parents and be asked all those questions.’
These are the issues Fiesinger has tried to alleviate since her office took control of commuter student issues in June 2006. Before that, commuter student problems and situations were diverted to a number of different offices throughout campus, so very few records and statistics existed of what commuters were going through.
When OOCP took over, Fiesinger sent out surveys to all the commuter students as a way to gather information about the number of commuters and where they were coming from.
Realizing that commuter students often do not feel part of campus life, Fiesinger plans to start a commuter student advisory council ? a formal board for commuters to provide feedback about their experience ? and a fully funded commuter student campus organization within the next 12-18 months, hoping to create a community at SU for commuters.
‘We do know that a lot of these students are feeling disconnected,’ Fiesinger said. ‘We want to give these students more opportunities to interact with the community and interact with each other. There definitely are some benefits to living in the residence hall, but it’s just not the right choice for everyone, and it’s not possible for everyone.’
That leaves Fiesinger with the task of trying to give commuter students a place on campus. Considering there are about 22,000 students at SU, including graduate students, the 250 commuters represent a tiny portion of the university.
SU did not even have an organized office for commuters until 2006. Right now, all of Fiesinger’s plans are just a work in progress, but she hopes it’s a step in the right direction.
‘What we are learning as field is there are more and more students who don’t necessarily fit the traditional mold,’ Fiesinger said. ‘They don’t take just four years, and they aren’t living on campus. Commuter-student programming in general is a fairly new field, and we’re learning more and more as students populations change.’
The current commuting system leaves some in dire need for modifications to the way commuting works at SU.
Though Messenger started at Syracuse as a freshman during the fall semester in 2005, she currently only has junior status because she had to take light class loads to keep her regular job. Messenger grew up in Syracuse, but her parents moved south after she graduated high school, and she has lived alone ever since.
To help pay for school, she works four days a week for a realtor in a private office and takes classes the other three days. With limited funds, Messenger cannot afford to live on campus or buy a parking pass for a lot on main campus. So instead of graduating in May, she has another year ahead of her – a year she vows will be different.
‘I thought about transferring or moving in with my parents and doing community college or somehow moving on campus,’ Messenger said. ‘I don’t know. But I will never graduate at this rate commuting.’
Published on April 10, 2008 at 12:00 pm
