Earlier this semester, the Student Government Association voted to endorse a proposal as part of the Automobile Congestion and Pollution Reduction Task Force. Part of the proposal states that by the fall semester of 2011, freshmen will no longer be allowed to register and keep their cars on campus.
The ability to have a car on campus is a huge draw for many incoming students, as it was for me when I was accepted to Conn. I came here knowing that the campus is isolated from downtown New London by Mohegan Avenue and I-95; the freedom a car provides is invaluable.
Many other students feel the same way. When asking a few seniors if having a car as freshmen was important, one explained, “It was one of the reasons I came here.”
Without missing a beat, three others echoed. “Same.”
Having a car allows freshmen who don’t live in the immediate area to go home over breaks without worrying about rides to and from the train station or paying for expensive Amtrak tickets. It provides the ability to travel independently of well-intentioned but insubstantial transportation services like the Camel Van and Zipcars. Not allowing freshmen to have cars at school keeps them from developing a relationship with both the city of New London and its neighboring towns.
In the 2007 – 2008 academic year, Conn’s freshman retention rate was 89.8 percent as compared to 93.9 percent among its peer institutions. Exit surveys show that one of the main reasons students leave is because they feel trapped on campus.
According to the March 2010 SGA Automobile Congestion and Pollution Reduction Task Force Report, the decision to disallow freshman car privileges can be traced back to 1999.
The Board of Trustees voted to approve but not endorse a version of the Master Plan that included one sentence advocating prohibiting freshman parking on campus. It is unclear exactly when freshmen were first allowed to bring cars to school, but SGA President Peter Friedrichs says it was around 1990.
The report also includes a figure as evidence for its proposals that lists twelve of Conn’s “peer institutions.” These include Haverford, Swarthmore, Bates, Amherst and others. Of the twelve, four allow freshman parking in the same style as Conn, and three others allow it with special permission from faculty.
The report says, “The relocation of New London 101 and hard-working LINCC club have refocused freshmen’s attention on the city of New London and demonstrated that it is possible to live without a car.”
Apparently by relocating one freshman orientation event from the beach to downtown, the school has managed to demonstrate that freshmen can function without cars? The connection here is unclear: enjoying downtown and being able to live without a car are two very different things.
Our campus is not an easily accessible part of the New London community. It is not a plausible option in most situations to walk downtown. Cabs are expensive (ten dollars from campus to the train station – not including a tip), in high demand and totally unreliable. Even biking downtown is dangerous, as our school is surrounded by highways rather than by smaller roads.
The task force defends its position by explaining that the change will “help to educate freshmen about life without an automobile.” This seems rather irrelevant, considering that by their sophomore year students will have the opportunity to bring a personal vehicle to school with them.
It concludes, “Freshmen would rely on the College’s and community’s public transportation and utilize relationships with upperclassmen friends and the Zipcar system to drive a private automobile.”
The transportation options to which the task force alludes are Southeast Area Transit (SEAT) buses, the Camel Van and Zipcars.
SEAT buses run from campus to downtown (and vice versa) only every two hours with the latest bus stopping at eleven o’clock.
The Camel Van, which has been outsourced to a company called Livery Limited, charges one dollar per round-trip. This fare must be paid in the form of a special coin students can buy at the Office of Student Life, which has limited office hours. More importantly, the Camel Van only operates four days per week. On weekends, the van’s last trip is before eleven o’clock, requiring students enjoying attractions downtown to cut their nights short.
As for Zipcars, they’re certainly a step in the right direction, but the service has an annual fee of $35 – roughly the cost of registering a car for one semester – in addition to a charge of $8.25 per hour or $61 per day. That means that using a Zipcar for five hours is more expensive than registering a car for a full academic year. Granted, this does not take into account insurance and gas for private cars, but the figures are still surprising.
The argument has also been made that in not allowing freshmen to have cars, underclassmen will befriend older students who are able to drive, thus encouraging interclass integration and bonding. However, it’s unrealistic to expect a group of freshmen to ask an upperclassman to drive them to dinner in Mystic or Groton on a Friday night. It eliminates opportunities and puts freshmen at risk of feeling as like a burden to older students, something nobody (especially a new college freshman) wants to be.
Our school is integrated in ways that many schools are not. We already house students from different class years and of different sexes on the same floors. Freshmen will invariably strike up friendships with older students, not based on transportation, but based upon the fact that there is constant exposure to members of other classes at a school this small.
It even happens quite often that the directionality of the ride-sharing arrangement is reversed. It’s not uncommon for carless upperclassmen to make friends with their younger vehicularly-privileged counterparts and for friendships to develop that way.
This overall argument ignores the countless freshman friendships that are shaped and solidified by car possession and trips off campus to Norm’s, the movies, the beach, concerts, Target and downtown New London.
Having a car, or just a friend with a car, allows students to interact with the world outside our campus in a more mature, independent way. This is something the school should embrace.
