The Plainsman Press - South Plains College

Ray Buffington, editor-in-chief

While Hurricane Katrina targeted Louisiana as it’s main victim, the entire United States felt the blow with the exorbitant oil costs that came afterward.

The gas station signs that used to proudly advertise an average price of $1.48 per gallon began changing daily, creeping all the way up to a record high $2.99 per gallon in Lubbock and even higher in the northeastern states.

The soaring gas prices are creating frustrated and sometimes helpless students, who are now having to stretch out their already-strained budgets even more just so they can get to class. This is especially difficult for those students who do not reside in Levelland, with some having to drive anywhere up to an hour and a half while elevating their gas costs up to $80 or more a week to reach South Plains College.

To aid those students who commute daily to SPC, the Office of Student Activities has created a temporary carpooling system that students will be able to use in order to save a buck or two.

The system, at the moment, consists of a large board in the Student Center that hangs on a wall opposite the snack bar. Stapled to the board are envelopes labeled north, south, east, and west. A student can get a form from the Office of Student Activities that asks information concerning destination, location, time of departure, phone number, name, and so forth. Interested students are asked to fill it out, then leave it in its corresponding envelope or with someone in the office.

Stan Weatherred, director of student activities, says he and his activities staff have been coordinating the carpool system, matching students together according to the received forms. But Weatherred hopes that the middleman will be cut out.

“We don’t want to be a service or anything as far as [them coming] to us to get carpooling,” Weatherred said. “We’re going to try to put everybody in contact with each other so they can start carpools on their own. Eventually, they can just come and look at the board. Hopefully, with ideas from the students who are actually carpooling, [the students] can come up with other, better ways of a system [for carpooling].”

Even before the gas prices started to experience extreme inflation, making students hopelessly dig through their empty, lint-filled pockets, there had been a carpooling sign up sheet available, but only for a certain group of students.

“It was originally for the students who live in the dorms here, so they could go to Reese, but we’re going to amend that so it will also include those going from Levelland to Lubbock [and vice versa],” explained Weatherred.

If a student was to gather a carpooling group together, it would save him or her quite a bit of money. From Lubbock to Levelland, or the other way around, if two students carpooled, they would only have to spend $2.50 in gas apiece to reach their destination, at least for the average sized vehicle. If four students were to carpool, then only $1.75 apiece would be spent per trip, making it a little bit easier to breath around a budget.

Currently, not many students are participating in the system. Weatherred says awareness is the major issue, as students just don’t know about the board. But he hopes to change that with mass e-mails to professors and good word-of-mouth.

“It will take a little while to get started, and for everybody to get used to it,’ said Weatherred. “[But] I think that once it does, it will be a really good deal.”.