Gas prices pass $3 and keep going

Students stay home as gas prices soar

By Katrina Garcia
The Collegian

Tired of your wallets being drained at the gas tanks?

With the recent surge in gas prices, students can turn to the Internet to find the least expensive gas prices in town. According to fresnogasprices.com, a Web site for people to post where they find the cheapest gas in the valley, students can fill up their tanks for $3.17 per gallon at the Valero gas station on Blackstone and Sierra Avenues as of Thursday evening.

The cheapest gas near Fresno State is $3.19 per gallon at the Shell Station on the corner of First and Shaw Avenues as of Thursday evening.

The likelihood that gas prices will continue to rise in the coming months and the recent increase of 60 cents per gallon in the past month have many people upset.

Don Leet, chair of the economics department, said gas prices have increased dramatically before, citing a time when people were shocked when gas reached $1 per gallon.

Reasons for the increase include that around this time of year, the United States changes over to using a different kind of gasoline, and the demand for gas increases as more people take road trips, Lee said.

If students are struggling with paying for gas, Leet suggested students use public transportation. He also said students who have the option of relocating to avoid a longer commute should do so or opt to use bicycles.

“Bicycles are really very efficient,” Leet said. “For a student, you can live within two miles of campus and get around.

”For people who need to drive, wallets are becoming thinner and thinner. Students like Jeff Fugelsang have to cut back their spending in other areas of their lives just to be able to afford driving around town.

“I’m not going out as much, and I’m eating at home more,” Fugelsang, a junior geography major said. “I’m not taking big trips.”

Fugelsang said it costs him about $60 to fill up his Jeep, and he fills it up at least once a week.

Many people aren’t taking the rise in gas prices quietly. A number of students have posted bulletins on Web sites such as MySpace.com urging its members not to buy gas on May 15 in an effort to put a dent in the oil industry for one day.

Some students said this is an ineffective idea, and one amounting to pennies in the pockets of oil companies.

“If somehow the entire United States got together it could work, but that’s not going to happen,” Fugelsang said.

Another student disagreed, and said if many people participated in the boycott, it would be successful.

“It would have to be a total boycott of energy,” junior pre-nursing major Ivan Perez said of the one-day boycott, “but that would still ruin us economically.”

Perez, who used to commute from Lemoore to Fresno State, now lives in Clovis. However, he still has to limit how much he drives. In the past, Perez enjoyed taking road trips and would drive two hours out of the way to check out other cities. Now, any trips he plans to take over the summer will not include any other destinations that aren’t nearby, he said.

“It’s not even tempting to go out of the way anymore,” Perez said. “You just feel limited. It’s depressing. It’s frustrating to think how much we have to sacrifice.”

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