Traffic congestion caused delays during centralized move-in process
8/25/21 By Riccardo Monico
Illustration provided by Alvaro Reynaud Gonzalez, Design Manager
Students waited in their cars for up to four hours during the on-campus move-in process on Saturday.
Binghamton University students living on campus faced severe delays with the move-in process on Saturday.
Initially, students were required to check in and pick up their room keys at the Events Center, and incoming freshmen or transfer students were also required to pick up their ID cards at the Admissions Center.
Paul DeGraff, a sophomore majoring in mathematics, said he was stuck on line for hours, and decided he would walk to the Events Center instead.
“I moved in on Saturday and oh my goodness was the line long,” DeGraff said. “I got past [U Club Binghamton] at about 11 a.m., and at 2:30 p.m. I decided to actually park my car on a side road about a mile away and walk to my building. I ended up walking back to my car later in the day once traffic cleared so I could actually move in.”
Ryan Yarosh, senior director of media and public relations at BU, said Tropical Storm Henri may have impacted the delays faced by students.
“There was no single factor that created the traffic congestion Saturday, but rather several challenges involving the impending storm and student vaccine verification combined,” Yarosh wrote in an email. “We worked throughout the day to continue to adapt. We are grateful for everyone’s remarkable patience and the many staff who stayed on late after what was already a long week of preparation and for their creativity and positive spirit under difficult conditions.”
Beck Almawaldi, a freshman majoring in mathematics, said BU should have planned better for contingencies, and should not have required all freshmen to move in the same day.
“Less than a mile away from the campus, I ended up getting stuck on the Route 201 exit behind a long line of cars,” Almawaldi wrote in an email. “Every possible entrance into the school seemed to be completely full. I remember feeling incredibly frustrated that the University had decided to move in all first-years on the same day. I had also heard that many returning students were moving in on this day as well to avoid the hurricane, which is completely understandable but greatly contributed to this issue. I ended up waiting in that line of cars for almost three hours until I was finally able to exit and arrive on campus.”
In an email sent out by the Residential Life Central Office at 3:55 p.m. on Saturday, the office announced it had changed the move-in process following the delays, and only students who were scheduled to move in that day would be allowed on campus.
“Thank you for your patience today,” the email read. “We have altered our check-in process to try to move people through more quickly. All those who are scheduled to move into their residence halls today, Saturday, Aug. 21, will be checked in today. If you were not scheduled to arrive to campus today, we do not have the capacity to check you in and look forward to checking you in tomorrow or after.”
The new move-in process required students to pick up their keys at their own residence halls, as opposed to a centralized system that funneled traffic solely to the Events Center. The change, which was also used the following days, caused traffic to dissipate and allowed for move-in to proceed without other unusual delays.
Almawaldi said the changes allowed for a much faster move-in process once students arrived on campus, but by that time, the damage had been done.
“Once I actually arrived on campus, check-in had been moved to the dorm communities themselves,” Almawaldi wrote. “The on-campus officers seemed very helpful in leading cars where they needed to go and the staff at the communities themselves seemed efficient. However, by the time I was finally settled in, it was about 8 p.m. (five hours after the University had anticipated in the original email).”
DeGraff said he felt BU should have been better equipped to move in large amounts of students on Saturday.
“I feel like [BU] just was unprepared for a move-in day for that many people,” DeGraff said.
“Although it was supposed to be freshmen only, this would only allow one full day before classes start for all others to move in, settle down, get some shopping done and prepare for classes. So on top of the freshmen coming in on the same day, there were probably [many more] students coming in early as well. Hopefully [BU] has learned from trying to move that many kids in on the same day.”
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