University of Maryland students board the 124 Shuttle-UM bus to Shady Grove.

Ever since Andrea Ortiz started commuting this semester, she’s had to dedicate less time to her work and friends.

While her daily commute is about 25 minutes to and from Silver Spring, Ortiz said it makes it difficult to keep up with her commitments outside of school, including working for the Help Center and attending various campus events.

“Sometimes I just won’t go to [a] meeting because I don’t feel like going home and coming back,” the junior family science and psychology major said. “I’ve had a lot of friends tell me I’ve been less active this semester, which is really sad to hear.”

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Next semester, the Student Government Association’s student affairs committee plans on finding convenient ways for commuters, especially those who rely on the Shuttle-UM buses, to be involved on the campus.

SGA Vice President of Student Affairs Katherine Swanson said her committee plans on meeting regularly with the Department of Transportation Services as well as Transfer and Off-Campus Student Life to discuss potential solutions.

“We are very much in the early stages of this project, but we really want to make commuters’ lives easier,” she said. “We want them to be able to get involved on campus without having to worry about going home.”

TOCSL Program Coordinator Keya Burks said she encourages students, particularly transfer students and commuters, to approach her with suggestions about improving campus engagement.

On the first Wednesday of every month, TOCSL has hosted “Good Morning Commuters,” a free breakfast for off-campus and transfer students. Next semester, Burks said, TOCSL and DOTS plan to put greater emphasis on the Transfer and Off-Campus Student Appreciation Week.

“The biggest thing for us to advocate for is community,” Burks said. “It goes back to making sure that students are present and advocating for whatever it is they want.”

Among the about 3,000 students who transfer to the university each year, Burks said, about 500 freshmen, who have never lived on the campus, are most vulnerable to lack of engagement.

She said it’s much easier for students who have already lived on the campus to remain engaged and work around conflicts with their commitments.

“That’s why most of our students who live off campus are leaders, because at one point in time they did live on campus; they did make those connections,” she said. “But that 500 group that never live on campus — that’s the group I seek to touch.”

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In an effort to help commuters who rely on the Metro, the student affairs committee suggested rerouting the Shuttle-UM 104 bus so it would travel farther into the campus past Regents Drive.

While this suggestion came up during DOTS’ campus transportation advisory meeting Monday, DOTS Director David Allen said it would be logistically difficult.

“The problem with going down Library Lane and down Fieldhouse [Drive] … is that at different times of the day, that gets backed up almost all the way to the baseball field,” he said. “Adding 10, 15, 20 minutes to a headway would spell disaster for any route.”

Despite this, Allen said, DOTS is open to more suggestions for the convenience of commuter students.

Swanson agreed with Burks and said it’s important not only that commuters voice their concerns to the university, but also that the campus community understand the issues and help work toward solutions.

“It’s really a campuswide issue, and I don’t think people realize that,” Swanson said. “People don’t really understand how many people are commuters.”