Gas Prices Begin to Affect More than Students

Gas prices across the nation continue to rise, spiraling out of control in many states. In the Northeast states of America, the gas prices have soared to nearly five dollars per gallon for regular octane gas. In some larger SUVs and pickup trucks, it will cost consumers nearly $100 to get a full tank of gas. With gas prices flirting with breaking current records, many Americans fear the worse has yet to come.

In the South, gas has remained under four dollars per gallon but prices are still uncomfortably high. Gas station clerks such as Amit Patel have never seen prices so high in their time working at a gas station. “I have never seen gas be so expensive. I wish I could control the prices of gas for my customers but it is not my decision,” explains Patel. Surely the high prices have strayed away some customers from the pumps, and ultimately strayed them away from coming in the gas station at all. Business is down.

Some students have learned to change their methods of getting to school. Twenty-year-old sophomore, Michael Templeton has begun riding the ‘Get on O.U.T.’ bus to campus. “I just can’t afford as much gas as I used to, I had to start riding the bus. Having to wait on a ride can get annoying but this bus is free for students, so I will get over it,” says Michael Templeton.

Other students are learning ways to cut back in other spending areas so that they can afford gas. Many students have not been going out to the square as much simply because they cannot afford it. Students such as myself haven’t been able to eat out as often or go to the bars. Surely this streak of inflated prices will eventually come down, although many fear that time is a long ways away.

Seemingly, the gas prices are on a cycle of inflating, then deflating again with the highest prices coming in the summer time. This cycle has affected many American, as well as international automakers. The engineers have been scratching their heads trying to come up with a ‘greener’ vehicle for production. With the demand higher than ever the automakers are struggling to produce green cars that have the aesthetic market value of automobiles that sell regularly.

With the economy on the fritz and jobs are harder to find than ever, many people are stuck in between a rock and a hard spot. Troubling gas prices has not only affected students and faculty; it has begun to affect the corporate executives of the automobile industry. Prices have soared to break recent records in many parts of the nation and the entire nation fears for the record that prices have yet to set. The worse time is expected to hit sometime in the summer of 2011.