Riding the Rails to Morningside Heighttts

While most undergraduates are stumbling through the bureaucratic wonderland that is the housing lottery, a quiet minority are shuttling in from all over the city via bus and subway. For many commuter students, the school day begins long before classes start, making the five-minute sprint from McBain look like a cakewalk.

Students who commute from off-campus face significant challenges in their academic lives. A long commute can be a barrier to being involved in clubs, staying on campus in the evening to attend lectures or being able to take advantage of late-night study groups.

Jasmin Alagheband, BC '09-who transferred to Barnard in the fall-thought that she would try and save money by living with her parents on Long Island. Last semester, she woke up at 7 a.m. to make her hour-long commute to Barnard for a 9 a.m. class.

"The train really wears you out," she said. "I wasn't involved in clubs or anything." Alagheband moved into the dorms this semester to be closer to campus.

For some students like Kathleen Apltauer, GS, there is no option to live on campus so she makes an almost two-hour commute every day from Brooklyn where housing in cheaper.

Housing for General Studies students is very limited, with approximately 75 percent of the entire GS population, including those in the pre-med and Jewish Theological Seminary programs, living in off-campus housing. Not all of these students are as far away as Apltauer, but many rely on public transportation to get to campus, limiting their involvement in extracurricular activities.

Apltauer said that because of the long commutes, she isn't able to get involved with anything that happens after school. But she has learned how to effectively build study time into her day.

"I've learned to do homework on the train," she said, "so much so that I have trouble reading now when it's quiet. The train is like white noise."

Commuter students find ways to cope with issues like lugging heavy textbooks on the train for an entire day of classes and forgotten homework that is more than three hours away.

When choosing what Alagheband needed to take with her for the day, she said, "I would plan big time. The commuter lockers were a big help."

GS and Barnard both offer lockers to commuter students. GS assigns lockers at the beginning of the semester based on how far away a student lives and Barnard charges a one-time $3 application fee. Columbia Libraries provides lockers in Butler to all students who wish to apply, with no special provisions for commuters.

Chris Riano, GS '07, manages to be very involved in campus life as a member of the GS Student Council and co-chair of the University Senate's Student Affairs Committee while living in the West 80s.

"If you make it a priority you can be involved," Riano said, but added that he has the benefit of an office with the University Senate. Riano makes time for his non-academic pursuits by getting to campus at 7 a.m. to have a large block of time before classes.

Alagheband noted one of the reasons why she chose Barnard was "to take advantage of what Columbia and Barnard have to offer...being on campus makes it so much easier."