Freshmen are the new kids on the block.
Leaving home for the first time can be scary and exciting at the same time.
You may be scared to leave your family, your hometown and everything you’ve ever known. However, you may also be excited to make new friends, get involved on campus and explore San Diego more.
The eagerness to be on your own for the first time starts to kick in more as your parents say their final goodbyes. Next thing you know, you have new best friends and are eating at University Towers Kitchen every single night.
As the weeks start to pass, you find that hanging in the dorms every night and eating at UTK can become boring.
You want to explore San Diego and see more of the city! That is one of the reasons why you came here right? But you don’t have a car, so how will you get places?
Let’s say you and your new friends want to go to the beach on a sunny Saturday afternoon. You could plan your trip minute by minute and take the trolley, but what if you miss the trolley or want to stay longer than planned? Not to mention the trolley has limited stops, so you would also have to take the bus? You could try and take an Uber, but that can get expensive, especially if you want to do more than go to the beach.
The bottom line is: there is no easy way for freshmen to leave campus and explore the ways they want to. The trolley rides can be unreasonably long and Uber rides can quickly drain your bank account, especially if you want to go somewhere every week.
Wouldn’t San Diego State want its freshmen to explore and fall in love with San Diego? With freshmen not being allowed to bring their cars, the university has set this overarching idea that freshmen should be stuck on campus.
My solution? Freshmen should be allowed to bring their cars to have easier access to leave campus and here’s why:
It could cure homesickness.
Freshmen need their cars in order to explore where they are living.
Most freshmen are leaving everything they’ve ever known to come to a new city but have no way to go explore their new home easily.
This can cause a great deal of homesickness. Sometimes all you need in order to cure homesickness is going somewhere fun off campus to hangout with your new friends.
It would allow them to have a quick escape route.
What if there is an emergency and a student has no way of getting somewhere quickly or going home if needed?
When SDSU kicked students off campus due to COVID-19, many freshmen were left to figure out how to move their belongings without cars, or parents were forced to come to San Diego from near and far and help.
Having a car would allow freshmen to be able to leave campus in case of emergency while also saving their parents the trip.
It would make them more comfortable living in San Diego.
Moving to a new place can be intimidating because you are unfamiliar with the surrounding areas.
You don’t know where the nearest CVS is or the quickest route to the beach.
Allowing freshmen to bring their cars would let them explore these places and get more familiar with their surroundings.
SDSU could make more money.
It’s no surprise that colleges love making money.
SDSU already allows freshmen to get waivers to bring their car to campus, so why can’t we let all of them? The school would make more money by charging for parking permits, so isn’t this a win-win situation here?
Even though this may hinder upperclassmen and faculty from finding easy parking spots or increasing traffic flow, other universities have found solutions in order to allow freshmen to bring cars to campus. Therefore, SDSU could follow suit and make solutions to allow freshmen to have cars.
As a former freshman who lived on campus and experienced dorm life, I know much of my homesickness could have been alleviated by just being able to go off campus and doing things with my friends.
So, SDSU, can freshmen finally have their cars?
Taylor Harris is a junior studying journalism. Follow her on Twitter at taylorharrisjms.
