Visualize being a college student who just got out of a communication studies class at 1:50 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. You use a motorized wheelchair to get around independently because you have cerebral palsy, and this means you rely on special transportation to get to and from your classes at CT State Community College Manchester. Your house is just 20 minutes away from school so you and your caregiver anticipate getting on a CT Paratransit service bus with the hopes of getting home by around 2:20 p.m., especially because you made reservations for the service a day or two, or even five days before the actual day of travel.  But it isn’t that simple. You find you can’t ever plan to do much with your day before or after class, because you can never predict exactly what time you are going to get dropped off at school or picked up after class ends. You just have to keep checking your phone or looking through the window at school to spot and catch the bus when it arrives. Imagine the anxiety of not wanting to miss the bus because you’ve been sitting in your wheelchair for quite some time and you want to go home and relax a little before tackling your homework. Imagine, sometimes even getting settled in the bus, thinking you are on your way home, only to find yourself still on the bus 45 minutes or even two hours later. The bus driver takes the long route to your house,  or even passes your home to pick up or drop off someone else, because it’s a shared-ride service. This has been my experience in college since fall 2019. It doesn’t happen every single day, but it happens more often than it should. I enjoy being at school and engaging with my peers and faculty members on campus, but to get to and from school has posed a great challenge for me. Due to the transportation issues that I was faced with last school year, as well as years prior, I made a point to sign up for only one on-site class at MCC which only meets two times a week and two classes in the form of Live Remote Online, when, LRON classes became popular during and after COVID-19.  Rene Lambert Credit: Courtesy: Rene Lambert Spring 2023 was a bit different though, because Manchester Community College at the time had stopped offering LRON classes, so I could only take traditional on-site classes. These classes met two times a week, which meant that I had to be at school four days a week. Both classes were not taught on the same days and if they were, that would result in an even longer day for me at school. I wish I could have taken more classes on campus that semester, but I was simply unable to because of having to travel back and forth four days a week with the unreliability of the bus service. I was so irritated because I know that I could have taken more than two classes that semester. I knew this because during the pandemic, all my classes were live remote, and I found three classes a semester to be reasonable and manageable for me. Quite frankly, it made getting my associates degree process faster – faster than when I was only taking two classes a semester pre-Covid.  Even though the community college merger has given students more class options across the board – including LRON – this does not mean that I want to be isolated from campus life, nor should that be the case for other students with disabilities. We need to be fully engaged in our own communities just like everyone else who has the capacity to do so. When I was in high school, the school district hired a separate wheelchair company by the name of Access to take me to and from school because I lived in an apartment complex. This was also the case for my other schoolmates who had special needs and needed this kind of service. Access was very efficient and the service was excellent. I know Connecticut State Colleges are not responsible for or required to transport students from their homes to campuses, but I beg to propose that it would be of great benefit to those who need it, especially those of us who have special needs.  I migrated to the United States seven years ago also from my native home, Jamaica, so certain resources like purchasing a vehicle for personal use is not feasible at the moment due to the expenses that may come with that endeavor. This is the reason why I decided to write a proposal to my school board last year. I even constructed a logic model as a semester project in my sociology class to explain why transportation is needed.  After completing my assignment for class, I emailed it to the CEO and other board members at my school. I also got to meet with them in person to express my concerns. This was a semester before the CT State Community College merger happened, so everyone was uncertain about how things would pan out. I did meet with other members of the board over the course of that summer and emailed back and forth with them, but there was nothing concrete that was established in regard to the transportation proposal.  It is my hope that continuing to write about this problem will help to bring awareness of transportation issues especially for students with special needs. Nobody should have to jump through hoops if they want to receive higher education. This will technically be my last semester at CT State Community College Manchester, but I am concerned about the transportation challenges I will face when I start university to earn my bachelors degree. I enjoy learning and I don’t plan to stop now. I have always been like this even as a little girl. Throughout my academic journey I have always been on the honor roll and dean’s list at CT State Manchester. Why should I stop now? I am quite sure that there are other students like me who desire and deserve to pursue higher education. Why then, should transportation be a barrier? The college experience should be more inclusive for all students! Rene Lambert. is a member of the Connecticut Mirror’s Community Editorial Board.