Is it really to far across campus to just walk?
In some situations for some people, yes. The conditioning days for the soccer teams are brutal. While it is actually good for them to walk a half mile or so to stretch out, the pain and soreness can be considerable. In the case of the football team, you’ve got guys with bad knees or just sore and beat up from playing. Mix in somebody who doesn’t manage their time well and risks being late to class, and you are asking a 20 year old kid to walk half a mile in 95 degree heat or 50 degree rain three, four or five times a day. Run the 66 half marathon, wait a day, then Park your car at the BOK and walk to Blue Dome and back at 8am, 12pm and 4pm. That’s about the distance from BAH to the academic suites at the stadium. See how it feels and more importantly, see how you smell. And that’s a big deal when you are 20 years old.
The buses help, but not every college kid has the planning and patience needed to do that regularly. You don’t like waiting on your luggage at the airport. Imagine doing a similar wait two or three times a day for four years while sometimes wondering if it is going to start hailing again. Then there’s the stigma of actually taking the bus.
It isn’t that far to just walk every once in awhile, but the average American thinks walking ten parking spaces from the entrance of Walmart is too far once a week. It’s a little unreasonable to ask the kids to give up the programmed car culture of their rural and suburban upbringings and just start walking 4 to 5 miles a day in Oklahoma’s unpredictable and often unbearable weather. They are gonna drive and they are gonna park. No amount of fancy pants green culture liberal arts ultra left wing thinking and planning will never be able to design around that fact. No matter how many streets they block off.
Ok. You want me to afford $500K in school fees and costs over four years. I live in the North Dallas suburbs and I bought my spoiled kid a car at age 16 so my wife wouldn’t have to ferry her around all day. Now She drives everywhere. She’s a little borderline obese but she studies everyday and makes great grades so I can’t complain about weight and her lack of exercise. You want me to tell her to give up the car and walk everywhere in the heat and rain for four years using your fraudulent rationale that it will reduce her carbon footprint ? Got it. Then they wonder why they can’t market the midsize school in a small school package idea to every kid driving a BMW around the Parkway school districts. And they wonder why Johnny from Jenks wants his car on campus when mom and Dad want him to drive home for family events regularly.
TU did the right thing by transitioning to a residential campus. Some of it is/was poorly planned. Some of those bad decisions were driven by marketing and ideology and not reality. UCF does few things well, but they made their commuter campus a residential campus and actually expanded parking and convenience. Reducing the number of seats in Skelly did not raise attendance. Reducing the availability of parking also did not lower the amount of driving.
