Transportation to Host School.....

goldfarb1

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For those of you who attend or are familiar with cross-city schools. How do you guys get to the host school?
 
For those of you who attend or are familiar with cross-city schools. How do you guys get to the host school?

Excellent question. With goaliegirl not being an experienced driver (especially in snow), we eliminated a couple of schools based upon the distance and road conditions from the host school (required for either classes or PT or both). However, we did leave some schools with fairly close host campuses on the list (commutable by public transit if necessary) and found that carpooling was generally self-organized by the cadets, typically with upperclassmen driving.

As things worked out, she ended up at a school where classes and PT are on campus with the PMS providing transportation to unit events (FTX, etc.). As much as freshmen think they want to have a car on campus, it really is more of a liability than a benefit in many situations, with parking often far from the dorm and usually expensive, upkeep on the car (you've got to start and run most cars weekly to keep it charged and running - not always convenient). You also tend to develop a lot of "friends" who want to borrow it or have you drive them someplace. Generally, colleges are set up where most students do not need a car except to travel to and from home and that is less frequent than you think. Now upperclassmen with internships and the like do start developing a need for independent transportation, especially if they move off-campus and need to shop for groceries and the like. By that time however, they've gotten enough feel for how life works on campus that they can manage the added responsibility for a car.

Hope this is helpful.
 
My son goes to a cross-town affiliate in a large metropolitan area. There are quite a few Mids from his school, so that helps with the car-pooling. Many of the upperclassmen have cars and the seniors have class on the same day as the freshmen, so first semester the seniors each took a few freshmen in their cars. The freshmen chipped in a few dollars each week for gas and maintenance. But the senior he was riding with wasn't available second semester, so my son decided to take his car back with him after the holidays. He's had to learn a lot about driving in a city, maintenance, etc. and it's been a real growth experience for him. But he likes being able to help others get where they need to be, and it helps him get around to get haircuts and dry-cleaning, etc. He also ended up driving to another city for one of the Nuke Club events.

I think one of the biggest challenges was how to get to class on the morning of the first day of school. He and several others took public transportation. They sometimes take public transportation to events also but it's not easy because the stops are far away from the dorms at his school and the NROTC building at the host school. Thankfully, the Mids at his school do PT together so they don't have to go twice a day, they mainly go to the host campus for class and drill.

Also, the cadre told us at Orientation that they don't worry about the transportation for classes and drill because the student leadership takes it on themselves to work it out. And I'd have to say they have done a good job of it.

Oh, one other thing...parking is problematic at both schools, expensive, hard to find, etc. And if a student is one of very few at a cross-town affiliate, all this is probably much more difficult.
 
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So if I were to do a cross-town, I'd probably have to get a car at some point. Is anyone familiar with Fordham NROTC? I'd imagine it being quite a hassle to drive from Fordham to SUNY maritime, and having to have a car in the city.
 
I'd recommend contacting the freshman advisor for Fordham and see what he/she says. We had some concerns before school started so the freshman advisor sent an email out to the other freshman Mids at my son's school, provided his email address as a central POC for anyone who wanted to join the discussion and they started an email discussion before school got underway. It was a good way to make friends too.
 
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