In the beginning of the year, I thought it was very nice to be living in BARH; I didn’t have to change out of my pajamas to go to breakfast, there are video games galore, people are quite friendly, and I’m right near the Houston Field House for all the hockey games. The only drawback is being far from campus. I overlooked this negative aspect because I found a positive side: the shuttle system. I didn’t use it much at first, but as the school year advanced, I became much lazier and therefore took the shuttles quite a bit more often than I had in the past. It wasn’t originally a problem—in fact it worked out great—but sometime in the past two weeks, the service got worse.
Last week, I was waiting for the shuttle outside the Field House to take me to my 4 pm class down in West Hall—obviously, I wasn’t going to walk all the way down there. I was at the shuttle stop approximately 10 minutes earlier than I needed to be to class. And I waited. And waited. And waited some more. In the 12 minutes I stood there, three shuttles passed me going the opposite way up to Stacwyck. By the time the shuttle arrived at the Field House—the first one who had passed me going the opposite way about ten minutes earlier—there were five students that were now late to class because of the shuttle. Seeing as it takes three minutes to walk from the West Hall stop to my class, I was eight minutes late to class. It’s not one of those classes you can walk in late to, either. It’s a small lab. The professor wasn’t too happy, and neither was I. The same situation occurs for early morning eight o’clock classes: lots of people, lack of shuttles. I was actually pleasantly surprised one morning, however, when a shuttle skipped Stacwyck and turned directly into the Field House parking lot.
Some people may say, “Isn’t there that tracking system set up by student government that can tell you where the shuttles are before you leave?” Well yes, there is. Despite whether or not it’s accurate—which is debatable—for most of my classes, I need to pack my laptop in my bag. Even if I were to check it before I turned off my computer, so much time passes between the time I get from my room to the shuttle that the information I looked at before I left is now irrelevant.
One more thing: why don’t the shuttles run on weekends? Plenty of people are on campus studying and doing projects for the following week. Personally, I’m a tutor, and after studying for two hours straight, I’m really tired and hardly have the energy to walk all the way back up to BARH, let alone to Stacwyck, for those who may live there. Okay, early morning hours might not be necessary, but offering a few shuttles in the late evening would be a huge relief to those of us who are on campus and have all our books or other project supplies.
If the drivers used common sense and their radio communicators, which are otherwise used for unimportant purposes, and learned that three buses don’t need to be at the same stop at one time, this world would be a better place … Well, at least there would be fewer angry students wandering the streets as prey for those Troylets that seem to be everywhere.
