The Eastman School of Music and its affiliation with UR is a beneficial resource to students of both schools. Music majors at UR are required to take a minimum of two semesters of lessons at Eastman.
In an effort to help students, UR runs hourly buses to and from Eastman. Most undergraduates take 30-minute lessons and each leg of the trip is between 15 and 20 minutes. Theoretically the whole trip, lesson included, should take about an hour. This unfortunately is never the case. The bus brings students to Eastman every hour a few minutes shy of the half hour (usually at about 27 minutes after the hour). The buses then leave just a few minutes later. The bus stops on Gibbs Street by the dorms; students then have to cross East Main Street.
This means that students who have lessons starting on the half hour risk being late for their lesson and still have to wait half an hour after their lesson for the bus back. If they don’t want to risk being late they would have to arrive an hour early and still wait a half hour after their lesson.
Students whose lessons start on the hour have to arrive a half hour early and then risk missing the bus back. All in all, a student who wants to ensure they are on time for their lesson has a good chance of turning a 30-minute lesson into a three hour extravaganza.
Fortunately, with a few small tweaks to the bus schedule, this could all be avoided. If UR set up buses that ran opposite the current bus system then buses would leave UR and Eastman every half hour, rather than every hour. Moreover, if the buses were scheduled to arrive at fifteen and forty-five minutes after the hour then students would no longer have to worry about sprinting to make the start of their lesson or watching as the bus pulls away without them.
