By Brittany Burke

On multiple occasions I have been approached and asked why the CCSU athletics department doesn’t provide students with transportation to reasonably distanced away games.

The latest occurrence of this happening was on Saturday as I stood on the outside of Wagner’s football field waiting for the game to start. I was tweeted by a friend asking me whether or not I thought providing transportation to the games was a good idea.

What is my answer to this question? Yes, the idea of getting buses of CCSU students to games to cheer on the Blue Devil athletes is a great thing, but it is not possible and worth the money that the school would have to pay.

A single bus to one game would cost several hundreds of dollars, not to mention the student tickets that have to be purchased. With all this money being spent there’s two things that need to be asked, who is paying for all of this and would there actually be participation?

These trips certainly wouldn’t be free, and no student likes to hear that they have to pay more money, whether it is our student activity fund or just buying the tickets from the student center, so already there is a fault.

The second question to ask is, would there be students to fill the buses? In all honesty, I don’t think so.

Before we worry about the student crowd at away games we have to try and fill the student sections at all home games, and this goes beyond just football. I believe that for the idea of bus trips to games to gain ground, students have to prove there is school spirit at games other than homecoming. They need to show up to basketball games, soccer and even the spring sports games.

School pride needs to begin inward before it can branch out to our competitors. Take advantage of the free games at Arute Field and on the CCSU campus before complaining about not being able to see away games.

If you want to see the games that badly then hop in a car and drive to the games, like other major schools expect their students to do, or listen to the audio streams online.

One of the tweets I received accused the Division I athletics department of treating CCSU as if it was a Division III school, which isn’t true.

The school gives the students opportunities to listen to and follow away games, but take one look at the amount of participation in the stands CCSU has compared to other D-I schools.

CCSU is on its way to building more pride among the Blue Devil community, but it’s not quite there yet. Students need to fill the home stands before talks about overflowing a rival’s stands with blue are ever thought about seriously.