The sale of the old Kirkwood Community College campus in southeastern Iowa City disrupted a well-coordinated route between multicultural residents and education services. This particularly affected linguistic minority students, or students for whom English is not their first language, who relied on transportation to the old campus and moved to neighborhoods with easy access to it.
In my experience as an instructor serving this specific demographic of students, transportation issues are one of the more common reasons given for missing or coming late to classes. The lack of usable bus routes to the new campus keeps many students from being successful in their classes. Solutions that address parking only “fix” the problem for a privileged subset of residents, those with access to a personal vehicle, and not for everyone. Routes should be designed to connect Kirkwood students to the Oakdale campus. As an institution serving this community, Kirkwood should be leading the advocacy for these students. One option could be to push for an expansion of the 380 Express to include the Oakdale campus on its route; connecting both campuses. Transportation should have been considered more carefully before moving from the old campus.
The sale of the old Kirkwood Community College campus in southeastern Iowa City disrupted a well-coordinated route between multicultural residents and education services. This particularly affected linguistic minority students, or students for whom English is not their first language, in the college’s free ESL (English as a Second Language), ELA credit (English Language Acquisition) programs as well as students in various academic programs on campus.
In my experience as an instructor serving this specific demographic of students, transportation issues are one of the more common reasons given for missing or coming late to classes. The lack of usable bus routes to the new campus keeps many of these (potential) students from being successful their classes. Solutions that address parking only “fix” the problem for a privileged subset of residents, those with access to a personal vehicle, and not for everyone. Routes should be designed to connect Kirkwood students to the Oakdale campus. As an institution serving this community, Kirkwood should be leading the advocacy for these students. One option could be to push for an expansion of the 380 Express to include the Oakdale campus on its route; connecting both campuses.
The sale of the old Kirkwood Community College campus in southeastern Iowa City disrupted a well-coordinated route between multicultural residents and education services. This particularly affected linguistic minority students, or students for whom English is not their first language, in the college’s free ESL (English as a Second Language), ELA credit (English Language Acquisition) programs as well as students in various academic programs on campus.
In my experience as an instructor in the ESL, ELA, and pre-Nursing courses, transportation issues are one of the more common reasons given by students in missing or coming late to classes. The biggest transportation-related challenge that I’ve observed from students is that coordinating carpooling among classmates often leads to groups of students being unnecessarily late or absent from class. The lack of transportation has forced students to carpool and coordinate their transportation using the resources they have in their communities. This can also potentially limit which courses they take, as students may be more likely to try and stick with a car-owning classmate as long as possible. Further, it makes for problems when the car-owning classmate is sick or otherwise unavailable; last-minute transportation arrangements can be difficult to manage across language barriers.
So far, Kirkwood’s response has been to expand parking spaces at the Oakdale campus, which is in line with out-of-touch administrators’ view of transportation issues as merely “parking issues.” This seems to come from a view centered on the experiences and pain points of students who have access to a personal vehicle. The point I wish to make here is that there is no such thing as a parking issue. These are transportation issues. Lack of parking is a symptom of a bigger problem, not the problem itself. Solutions that address parking only “fix” the problem for a privileged subset of residents, not for everyone.
From over a decade of working with ELA students at Kirkwood, I believe the areas most in need of these connections to be western Iowa City, southeast Iowa City, and to a lesser extent, North Liberty, however, collaborations between Kirkwood and city/county administration can arrive at a more accurate idea. Better yet, these agencies should be allowing and listening to the voices of the residents they are meant to represent and be held accountable for decisions that center a privileged class at the expense of others.
Routes should be designed to connect Kirkwood students from these areas to the Oakdale campus. As an institution serving this community, Kirkwood should be leading the advocacy for these students instead of increasing parking; slapping on a concrete band-aid at the expense of the students they have marginalized as well as any future climate goals they may or may not have. Another option could be to expand the 380 Express to include the Oakdale campus on its route; thereby connecting both the Oakdale and main campuses of Kirkwood. This could benefit a larger number of students, staff, and faculty due to the increasing need to travel between campuses as resources are spread thinner and thinner between the two locations.
All that said, this should not be taken as representative of all Kirkwood students, even all students for whom English is a second language, however, it does highlight weak areas of transportation in Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, and Johnson County as a whole and proposes some solutions. I encourage residents of Johnson County, regardless of their language or cultural background, to express their transportation needs and the shortcomings of current designs in public. We will continue to push administrators to listen.