Not every college student owns a car.

While this is not an earth-shattering revelation, it is quite surprising how much the university seems to assume every college student owns a car.

This observation stems from the convenience of the university busing system.

The University of Southern Indiana is the temporary home to many foreign exchange students and students studying abroad. It is not surprising these students wouldn’t haul a hunk of metal over the Atlantic Ocean with them.

Not only is that inconvenient, it’s expensive.

With that being said, it might be assumed adequate accommodations would be made for students who do not have the luxury of a personal car to take them grocery shopping, or anywhere for that matter.

This assumption, while valid, would be incorrect.

The university busing system is flawed, and many students are forced to deal with it. Students are forced to deal with odd bus hours, and not having any bus shuttles running every day of the weekend.

The fact the university does not run shuttles consistently during the weekends is dumbfounding.

Walking to and from campus is not that hard of a task. Even for those living in the on-campus apartments, the trek is not too much for anyone to handle.

It gets the blood moving.

It might be understandable to encourage students to stick around to enjoy the weekend activities on campus.

Yet, on the weekends, there is no campus life. Pretty much everyone leaves campus on the weekends.This means there is not an abundance of weekend activities to enjoy, which leaves those without transportation trapped in their room all weekend, listening to the crickets of a dead university.

Not to mention, the weekend is the most convenient time to stock up on groceries.

USI does have a high number of students who commute, and it is understandable that this plays a factor in the frequency of the campus buses.

Yet, if this campus does not become more resident friendly, little is going to encourage those types of students to attend school here.

Little is going to draw foreign exchange students to a campus that makes transportation a hassle.

As a university, we are moving in the right direction. We just need to get a better engine behind the effort.