Each morning, Brookdale residents elbow their way out of their crowded rooms, 29th streeters begin the four to seven minute walk through a cooler part of midtown, 35th street chosen ones whip up a stack of pancakes in their luxurious kitchens, and 36th street dwellers chat about how great 36th is. Meanwhile, in another, darker part of town, the married students wait.
If you’ve ever taken the bumpy road up to Yeshiva University’s Wilf Campus, you know that as you get closer and closer, the skies seem to get darker, trees look more sinister, and brightly-lit “food trucks” haunt the streets. While most wouldn’t describe the areas of Washington Heights inhabited by the YU community as “charming,” it does have its charms, most notably the 1 train downtown. Are the girls who huddle outside of Zysman every morning, in rain or in snow, particularly pleased to be living in the Heights? Perhaps (not), but the trek to Stern each morning certainly does afford lighter skies, more innocent-looking trees, and the kind of food trucks that actually serve food.
Unlike the preciseness employed in the Stern caf when it comes time to unhook the forbidding orange chain that separates students from the food they love to hate, the “married bus,” as it is wont to be called, leaves both its ring and its sense of commitment behind as it saunters up Amsterdam each morning sometime around 8 but never quite when you expect it. Dependable it is not, but depend on it Stern and GPATS students do.
But just a few weeks ago, the careful relationship that the married bus had been cultivating with its legions of Stern and GPATS girls eager to make their way downtown each morning seemed to have hit a speed bump. Just when the bus-goers were beginning to get past the memory of angsty mornings earlier this year involving the arrival of one mini-bus and one bus driver stubbornly insisting that 50 girls could “just get on” to a bus designed to hold half that amount, tragedy struck again.
On an otherwise normal night in the Heights, those Stern students who depend on the bus each morning browsed their Facebook feeds in an effort to distract themselves from the cacophony of curiously late-night ice cream truck music and those songs you hear in Zumba class punctuated by the sweet voices of children playing in the park hours after conventionally appropriate bedtimes. Before long, everyone had seen it: a link to an Observer news update informing students that the bus would no longer be servicing Stern students but would instead be replaced by a 15-seater van intended to faithfully ferry GPATS students to the Beit Midrash in what was being touted as the original and divinely inspired plan for the married bus.
As the shock settled in, married Stern students began sending a flurry of heartbroken and angry texts, asking each other where they had gone wrong with the married bus. “Was it something I said?” sobbed one student, who had married only weeks earlier but had quickly grown attached to the bus, while another, more veteran rider, married nearly a year, expressed anger at the flighty nature of the married bus and asked when it would “start acting like it’s in a committed relationship.” The more practical of the bunch asked the questions everyone was too frazzled to ask: “So what happens if a 16th person joins GPATS?” asked one particularly incensed married student, looking up from her phone in between angry texts. “Are they going to deny more women access to Talmud study or will they simply tape a seat to the roof?”
That night, while some married Stern students slept fitfully, saddled with the knowledge that the married bus would remain a reality for just two days more, those students who had been keeping vigil on Facebook and stewing in their own thoughts of inequality and resentment were gratified with an update on the Observer website, informing students that the administration was “already working on ensuring that there is a way for students to get to school in the mornings,” and that the bus would remain in place until then. Shaken students wondered what the cryptic message implied; was Stern investing in a new subway line that would shuttle directly down to Lexington Ave? Would students be treated to a helicopter ride or perhaps even a number of well-trained horses?
In the days to come, a final update was issued by the Stern administration, declaring that “transportation between the Beren campus and Washington Heights is remaining the same. Should there be any questions in the future, please feel free to email answers@yu.edu.” In the weeks since the break-up and heavily moderated reconciliation, the married students remain hopeful that their previous relationship with the married bus can be fully restored to the way things were in (what students now realize were) its honeymoon days.
The dynamic each morning as married girls wait for the married bus has shifted; whereas before, its arrival would be greeted with a chorus of “Finally” and “Thought this day would never come,” married students now offer thoughtful cups of coffee as they gingerly climb aboard and quietly settle in for the ride, welcoming the brighter skies as they head down the FDR as signs of a brighter future.