The disparity of commuting against dorming Students

By Salahideen Salem
Opinion Columnist 

A complaint not often heard when attending Saint Mary’s is the disparity of opportunities between dorming and commuting students. While many students live close by, others are not often afforded that opportunity when it comes to college, and as a result, it is easy to miss many events for those who do not live in places such as Walnut Creek. While dorming is a less time-consuming alternative, the increased tuition of dorming nowadays makes this more difficult for many students. This grows in starker relief in certain situations where one may live distantly, but not so far as to justify the increased costs of bunking in college. As a result, they are bound to miss many opportunities, such as through events, clubs, or even just forming bonds. 

Firstly, when attending Saint Mary’s, I was struck by how it was difficult to do much of anything when one was set on a timeframe. Many clubs are restricted to working late nights and when I began participating in the Visiting Writers’ Series course, I had a great deal of difficulty attending because they were set late at night. While one may argue that these are the only times where people can organize these events, it also means that people who come for night classes will seldom have the time to attend these events. Moreover, when I gave my contact information to many of the clubs I was interested in at the beginning of the fall semester, I quickly found they were often set at times when I wasn’t available. 

Both my brother and I normally just go home whenever we finish classes, and oftentimes free time was dedicated to just finishing work whenever we stayed in school. It made for a rough experience when adding the hour long drive home to it and the value of time to the mix. Being home is a time to wind down, and often staying late to attend events or clubs when you couldn’t before add to stress when there is little respite to the constant flow.

On the opposite end of things, going home early is not a solution either. This robs many students of the opportunity to create bonds and in general, further adds to the anxiety propagated by the consistent rush and flow of college. It prevents them from becoming a part of the community and weighing more on issues or matters that pass through time. The inability to join a club makes matters especially difficult, as it grows tougher to befriend anyone or even interact with others beyond the few classes you have with them. It makes for further difficulties and adds to a growing sense of isolation as you are consistently locked out of the loop. While these complaints are not often vocalized in my experience, they tend to feel very real as a commuter, especially when one cannot devote all their time to college. 

While I feel like the community is great in Saint Mary’s, having limited opportunity to access it really hinders one’s enjoyment to it. It needs more time to be balanced among all sides, as well as more options to use apps to attend events remotely, such as through Zoom. Recently, many events now have been growing later and later in the hours of the day, and often I feel like it makes trying to join in on college activity or camaraderie exhausting. What good is a beneficial event if you can’t take it in due to all the stress and anxiety that comes from the constant flow of activity? We need to balance college life not only for people who dorm but also for commuters so that they can have a healthy and productive school year.