When a student imagines their Heaven on Earth, a vivid sensory experience comes to life: the clicking of a car’s ignition, a roaring highway beneath rubber tires and an endless parking lot with too few spaces at their university. Inside the student’s vehicle is their passion, goals for the future and desires for the present, but when it is time to go home, the student takes everything with them, leaving nothing to sustain this academic Garden of Eden. With a majority of students commuting to campus, UT San Antonio lacks the opportunity for a blossoming campus culture.
Despite recent housing additions, UT San Antonio is still largely a commuter campus. Over 85% of enrolled students live off campus in housing unassociated with the university, requiring the school to maintain over 15,000 parking spaces. Since options are so limited, campus culture lives and dies under UT San Antonio’s watch. After all, there is only so much the university can do.
On Main Campus, there are over 300 student organizations dedicated to connecting students together based on unified interests. They fill a multitude of niches, ranging from academics to artisanal soapmaking, but even this leaves gaps between the different student groups. Campus celebrations — such as BestFest and Dia en la Sobrilla — enhance engagement, and frequent sporting events fill the space in between. These support systems attempt to fill the void, but there is only so much they can do.
Weekends are dead on campus, and even during the week, students are forced to venture far into the city to find entertainment. Given how unwalkable the area surrounding campus is, there are few opportunities to bump into vague acquaintances, explore random areas or stumble into a function without deliberately seeking those experiences. For something simple, such as traveling the mere half mile to H-E-B, pedestrians are accompanied by rushing cars on Highway 1604.
The student body is split and isolated into its various small groups, thoroughly diluting any semblance of campus culture. Even as the university administration continues to publish plans for housing, these new dorms cannot glue together a sense of community if the surrounding area continues to be hospitable for cars only.
UT San Antonio ensures that when students and faculty are on campus, they are welcome — but when Rowdy leaves, he takes the party supplies with him. UT San Antonio’s commuter culture creates a sense of disconnect around campus, rather than the Roadrunner Spirit administration aims to instill. In a more interconnected UT San Antonio, division would not be its unifying factor.
