By Emilia Benton

Early last month, I returned to campus to begin my new, semester-long schedule of commuting to Manhattan for my internships at Glamour and CosmoGIRL! magazines three days a week. Unlike most of my fellow classmates/current interns, I am one of the few who does not have a car on campus. This leaves me to rely on the Blue Beetle, the University’s courtesy bus, to take me to the train station. In the past, I rarely have had problems with the service.

Coincidentally, my first week back on campus also included having my twin sister, a student at New York University, staying with me here at the University. As she had studied abroad in Spain last fall, she wasn’t able to move back onto NYU’s campus until the following week, so the plan was for her to stay with me and commute into the city to work with me on the days I interned and by herself on the days that I was working here on campus.

I’m usually pretty good at planning out which train to take when coming back to campus from the city so I don’t end up waiting a long time to be picked up at the train station. But this time, my supposedly well laid-out plans resulted in money being unnecessarily wasted on cab fare. (On a side note, before I begin my rant, I should say that the schedule has thankfully never made me late getting into work in the city.)

The first day I was back interning (a Monday), my sister and I left the city at around 6:30 p.m. The bus schedule has always read that it runs to the Hempstead train station until 9:00 p.m. When we got there, we waited about 15 minutes before I finally called Public Safety to ask what was up. I was informed (rather rudely, I might add) that the Blue Beetle doesn’t run during the 7:00 hour. After telling me that, no, the “Road Runner” bus leaving the Mineola train station could not pick us up, the officer snapped at me to check the schedule next time before hanging up on me.

After taking a cab back to campus, I opened up my “trusty” Guide to Pride handbook and flipped to the pages detailing the bus schedules. Sure enough, this detail (about the bus not running at 7:00) is NOT included in the schedule. Additionally, I had never taken the “Road Runner” before, so I thoroughly read that schedule in an attempt to plan out my sister’s returning commute for the next day. While the Road Runner is reserved for making hourly loops around campus, I learned that it also makes several trips to the Mineola train station between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. during the week, leaving campus at seven minutes past the hour. So we planned for my sister to take a train that would have her arrive at the station by 7:15 p.m. When the train ended up running five minutes late, I called Public Safety to ask if the bus could possibly wait a few minutes before leaving the station. Again, I was snapped at and told that the answer was no, the bus has a schedule to stick to. I found this to be very ridiculous; after all, isn’t picking up students the reason it comes to the station? As predicted, my sister ended up shelling out more cash for cab fare that night.

The following day, we were both working in the city, and actually managed to catch the bus that night. On the way back to campus, I asked the driver exactly when and where to catch the bus if we’re coming back to campus around 7:30 p.m. In a much more polite manner than that of the Public Safety officers I had previously consulted with, the driver explained the Road Runner’s schedule to me and also added the detail that Public Safety never offered: look out for a yellow bus; it’s not the easy-to-identify blue one like the Blue Beetle. The next day I was working on campus, but I decided to catch the Road Runner on its trip to Mineola to meet my sister, and to be sure that it didn’t leave without her again (which proved successful).

The Department of Public Safety should really improve its communication with students about the schedule. While I know that the University largely consists of commuter students, as well as many residents with cars, there are still many of us who don’t have cars of our own on campus. Instead of acting as if we’re the most inconvenient annoyances of their day when we call with questions, Public Safety could easily do simple things like updating the schedule online and placing an announcement for students to see on the Hofstra Online Portal.

There are also various changes that could stand to be made with the service itself. When the bus schedule was changed to include trips to Mineola during late-night hours to replace the trips to Hempstead, the schedule should have been changed to take out trips to the Hempstead station altogether. When students are dropped off to catch a train at Hempstead, they often end up having to wait about 40 minutes (especially on the weekends) for the next train to leave. Mineola has several trains running each hour, but even if you do end up having to wait, I think most students would be in agreement that the Mineola station has an all-around safer atmosphere about it than Hempstead does.

Another change to consider is the fact that the bus schedule could stand to include more than one trip to the train station every hour. If the Road Runner is already running around campus in the mornings and afternoons, couldn’t the Blue Beetle have one universal stop, such as the Student Center, to pick up students wishing to catch a train, so that it has time to include a few more trips to the train station instead of wasting time circling campus? With the money the University has spent on things like the recently-added campus “signage,” I’m sure it can afford to add more busses if it needed to. I’m sure my peers would be in agreement that making improvements to add convenience for students commuting to and from the city would be a smart spending choice on the University’s part.

Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].