Commuter Colleges Are Different

Inside Higher Ed

Matt Reed

June 1, 2020

A glaring gap at a Senate hearing.

A faithful reader sent me a heads-up about the June 4 Senate committee hearing on “Going Back to College Safely.” Witnesses scheduled to testify include Mitch Daniels, from Purdue; Christina Paxson, from Brown; Logan Hampton, from Lane College; and Georges Benjamin, from the American Public Health Association.

Notably missing is anyone from a community college, or even a commuter college.

That matters for reasons beyond the usual. The issues that commuter campuses face are fundamentally different.

At the most basic level, our students leave campus every night, going to homes (or cars, sadly) all over Monmouth and neighboring counties. In many cases, they share those homes with people who work in other industries entirely. Some of those people are older, some are immunocompromised and some are children.

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