Last Wednesday, the Associated Student Government Senate had two options: Spend more than 75 percent of its discretionary budget at once, or lose the highly successful Saturday inter-campus shuttle service for most of Spring Quarter.
After little discussion, the Senate voted unanimously to allocate the necessary $3,825.
“This isn’t something that we want to do every year, but we didn’t want it to fail,” said speaker of the Senate Jack Eichorst, a Weinberg senior.
Northwestern originally allotted enough funds to run the shuttle for five hours each Saturday. But the student leaders in charge of the program expanded its operating time to 6.5 to 10 hours a day, depending on whether or not there was a football game.
The Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee requested administration funding for the shuttles last spring. The organization asked for only five hours worth of funding for the pilot program to avoid overestimating demand for the service, said Jonathan Kent, the committee’s director.
“We did this rather than risk having an empty shuttle,” the Weinberg senior said. “Where the university is saying ‘Here’s another service that we’ve provided that you aren’t using.'”
But later that fall, increased demand caused the group to expand the shuttle’s running hours. ASG members involved in the decision – the “shuttle committee” – included Kent, external relations chairman Samir Pendse, student services vice president Nate Perkins and president Neal Sales-Griffin.
Pendse said they anticipated that a corresponding increase in ridership would lead the administration to provide the extra funding to keep the service running until the summer.
“When we expanded the hours in fall, we were going to go over budget, but that was a risk we were going to have to take,” the Weinberg junior said.
But according to William Banis, NU vice president for student affairs, the state of the economy has left the administration no extra money to spend when approached for funds.
“The assumption that people would be able to ask more money turned out to be wrong,” Banis said.
Even shortening the schedule to five hours a day – the shortest rental period the bus company offered – would not save enough money to run the service every remaining Saturday.
The committee decided to ask the Senate to use the majority of its $5,000 discretionary budget for the project because it had no alternative plans for the money at that point, Pendse said.
“There was nothing that was imminent that we were going to use it for,” he said.
Although he called the shuttle “one of the biggest tangible improvements to the school since I’vebeen here,” Pendse said he wasn’t sure if or for how long it would be able to run next year. The main funding, he said, would hopefully come from the administration. Other options, such as cost-sharing and forms of student payment, are also being considered.
Banis said any discussion of next year’s funding was premature, but did not hesitate to offer the shuttle guarded praise.
“The shuttle service was effective, and it will be given serious consideration,” Banis said.
