Unlike students at other colleges, Quinnipiac students are lucky enough to have Good Friday off from classes. This allows some students to go home for the weekend to celebrate Easter with their family.
However, expensive train and bus tickets, along with the shuttle schedule, make it difficult for some students to get back to campus on Easter Sunday.
I live about 45 minutes north of Boston and usually take the bus home from South Station in Boston to Union Station in New Haven for breaks. Yet, the bus and shuttle schedule on Easter Sunday makes so that if I were to go home that weekend, I would either miss dinner with my family or return to campus late at night.
I could choose to take the Megabus and leave South Station at 3:15 p.m. and get to New Haven at 6 p.m. Then I would have to wait for the 7:25 p.m. shuttle and arrive on campus at 8 p.m. There is also a 7:15 p.m. bus which gets to New Haven at 9:45 p.m., but I would have to wait for the 10:35 p.m. shuttle and get to campus at 11:10 p.m. These tickets would cost $42.
Tickets for the Greyhound bus come at the cheaper price of $28. I could leave at 3 p.m. and get to New Haven at 7:30 pm. Yet, this means I would miss the shuttle by five minutes and have to wait for the 9:10 p.m. shuttle and get to campus at 9:45 pm. My best option could be to take the 6 p.m. bus and get to New Haven at 9:05 pm. Hopefully my bus would be on time and I would make the 9:10 p.m. shuttle to get to campus at 9:45 p.m. Otherwise I would have to wait for the 10:35 p.m. shuttle to return to Quinnipiac by 11:10 p.m.
While the schedule for the train is more convenient, a one-way ticket price ranges from $75 to $102 on Easter Sunday, which is out of my price range for one weekend at home.
I know I cannot be the only student in the Boston area who is struggling with this problem.
On Easter Sunday the university should consider running express shuttles from Union Station to campus every hour on the hour, as it does the Thursday and Friday before Thanksgiving, winter and spring break. Most students travel alone back to campus, so if the shuttles came to Union Station more frequently students would not have to be by themselves in New Haven for more than an hour.
To make transportation easier for students on Easter weekend, Quinnipiac Parents Association should also run buses from Quinnipiac to Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, similar to the buses the Parents Association sponsors for Thanksgiving break.
The Quinnipiac Parents Association runs three round-trip buses to Natick, Mass., Uniondale, N.Y. and Paramus, N.J. for students to travel from the university to home. Tickets cost $45 round-trip, which offers a much cheaper option than a roundtrip bus or train ticket. Plus, students do not have to coordinate the shuttle schedule with their bus or train ticket; the Parents Association-sponsored bus brings students right back to Quinnipiac on the last day of break.
This Thanksgiving, the bus to Natick, Mass., was so popular that the Parents Association added a second bus to transport students. A Quinnipiac-sponsored bus Easter weekend would likely be just as popular.
Last year, I could not go home for Easter weekend because these options were not available and I likely will miss Easter dinner with my family again this year.
By giving students more opportunities to travel home for Easter weekend, the university would reinforce its commitment to make the lives of its students better.
