The recipe for campus culture: spontaneous meetups, late-night study sessions, food plan dinners, roommate drama, and exploring your college town. It is that simple, if you are a resident on campus, of course. But for students who commute back and forth from home to school, concocting the right ingredients to replicate that recipe can feel almost impossible.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) used to be mostly commuters; however, according to the Office of First Year Admissions, recent percentages have shown that there is a rise in on-campus residents, with 63% of students living on campus and only 37% of students commuting. In return, SNHU has been implemented new additions to the on-campus experience to cater to new residents, including a new partnership with American Dining Creations that was facilitated in the 2023-24 academic year, with a Dunkin Donuts in the Academic Center.
New additions offer a fresh start for students that live on campus, however SNHU is neglecting the consequences the commuter students must undergo. The dining hall used to be a safe space for commuters to go to, and now students cannot step into the dining hall without having a dining plan, swiping their ID cards, or paying full price for a meal, even if they don’t want to eat.
Finding places besides the commuter lounge to socialize with other students has become harder to find, with the library and academic halls being inappropriate for meetups outside of doing schoolwork.
Jonathan Lawton (’25), a commuter on campus from Manchester, NH, used the dining hall as a commonplace to meet up with his friends. “It was a great place to feel included in the campus life that I could rarely enjoy, because if I wasn’t in class, at work, or asleep, I am driving to do one of those things. Finding a place to relax and study in-between classes was crucial to finding friends, getting work done, and not move around constantly.”
Losing a place like the dining hall may seem insignificant to some, but to others, they lose a sense of belonging.
SNHU has a multitude of on campus events catered to the interests of the students in the community, but choosing later event times in the night has limited the attendance of commuter students, some who are weary of driving home late at night. While having separate events for only commuter students earlier in the day may seem like a simple solution, this only fosters an even greater separation between on campus and commuter students, who may want to integrate every now and then.
Accessibility for commuters should be at the forefront of SNHU’s priorities as a basis for students to work with. New commuters already struggle to make friends, foster communities to relate to, and to not fall into a lonely routine of strictly class and home.
By creating a home away from home on campus, students can disconnect from their family or work lives and make memories with their peers, whether they live in a dorm or not.
