Easy-to-use bus system at NU possible: Just look at Austria

As I am currently studying in Vienna, Austria, I am happy to witness a public transportation service that works more fluidly than my heart pumping blood through the tiniest capillaries in my body and back again. Although I agree with Jason Bolicki’s Thursday column arguing that most students would not benefit from U-Pass, I believe very strongly that Northwestern has the resources to create a bus service that offers transportation on campus, between campuses and around Chicago.

I believe the university is most lacking in transportation around campus. As I see it the system should have three lines named Bus 1, Bus 2 and Bus 3 — no colors and no clever or NU-patriotic names. At every stop there should be a map showing all three lines and a legible schedule showing with unadulterated clarity when the next bus will arrive. The stops should be accessible to off-campus apartments, dorms, El stops and the oft-forgotten Regenstein Hall of Music practice rooms.

If these conditions were met — and the buses ran regularly — then people would start riding them, and I would never have to walk from South Campus to Technological Institute on crutches after spraining my ankle because I had no idea where a bus stop was in relation to University Place, let alone when it would come.

Since buses have been offered before, and a shamefully tattered and unreliable patchwork of bus stops is available now, acquiring buses does not seem to be a problem. Intercampus transportation would work the same way, and contrary to Bolicki’s column, I was more than once on the intercampus shuttle when it was full of people. Of course it came so late that everyone I was waiting with started grumbling that they would never ride the bus again, but we all know how to change that.

If a new system of bus transportation that actually worked appeared on our campus, who is to say that the Chicago Transit Authority wouldn’t remodel the unreliable, unpredictable system it “offers” now? If our small university can’t set up a decent form of bus transportation, then it no longer surprises me that most U.S. cities haven’t stepped it up in that regard either.

David Wengert

Weinberg junior

Bailey enjoys his free speech but relies on flawed research

In Nadir Hassan’s Tuesday column, he writes of the threat to free speech. But freedom carries a responsibility, and psychology Prof. Michael Bailey — writing as a professor and claiming his book is about science — has a responsibility to do it properly.

Constructive critiques of his book have also appeared. Many point out that his biological essentialism only tells part of the story. Others point out that he has taken a small subset of the transsexual population and generalized it to the whole.

My problem is that, even within his self-admitted reductionist framework, his theory is fundamentally flawed.

Jed Bland

Derby, England

U-Pass benefits would extend beyond commuter students

I would urge Jason Bolicki not to be so hard on the U-Pass. I got one through the Medill School of Journalism’s graduate school and use it at least twice a day. Although not everyone commutes to school on the El — Medill’s graduate campus isn’t accessible by intercampus shuttle, by the way — I would argue that a lot of students have internships downtown — or at least venture into the city for fun a few days a week — and could use the break on CTA fare.

Plus we are only in college for four years — why not take advantage of the student discounts that are available to us? Even though I attend the symphony and visit the Art Institute of Chicago less often than I’d like, I still benefit from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s $10 student rush tickets and the Institute’s free-admission Tuesdays.

And even though every student isn’t an everyday commuter, U-Pass would still be a financial break for a number of students — commuters or not. I’ll happily pay full CTA fare next year, but for now I love my “unlimited” access.

And I’ve never missed a train because I needed to put more money on my CTA card.

Michelle Gabriel

Medill graduate student

former Daily staff member