By Jennifer Vargas
Daily Bruin Contributor
The BruinGo! program has provided transportation to many
graduate students. This is reason why the Graduate Students
Association is fighting for its survival past this year.
Dorothy Kim, vice president of internal affairs, is trying to
promote alternative methods of commuting, including BruinGo! and
carpooling.
“BruinGo! is my pet project. It drives me crazy all the
time because transportation services, which often calls itself
parking services, refuses to admit they are transportation
services,” said Kim, who has been lobbying for BruinGo! since
last year.
The BruinGo! program began in fall 2000 and was initially funded
by parking revenue services. It allows for students, faculty and
staff to ride the Big Blue Bus for free with the swipe of their
Bruin card.
“I’m really for public transportation. I wish more
people took advantage of this program,” said Nathan Jones, a
graduate student in mathematics.
The pilot program is slated to end on June 14. The results will
be available within the next two weeks in an e-mail, said Mark
Stocki, director of business and administrative services for
transportation services.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale will make the final call on whether
the program will continue. If the program does not continue, riders
will have to pay 50-70 cents starting in July.
“Its pretty much a program that all graduate students want
to keep,” Kim said. “They’ll protest in droves to
keep this program.”
Kim wants to work with the Undergraduate Students Association
Council between elections to figure out a course of action. She
said this could mean anything from “a protest or meeting with
the chancellor.”
One of Kim’s main objectives is to push for an alternate
option of transportation instead of the one car per graduate
student scenario.
Because space and parking is limited, she said she’d
advocate the use of BruinGo! and carpools. She feels the
university’s money would be better spent on other things
besides parking.
Parking services will create 1,500 new parking spaces with the
Intramural Field parking structure, which is planned to be
completed in fall 2003 at the cost of $31,000 a space.
“(Transportation is) spending all this money on parking
spaces,” Kim said, and criticized them for not using this
money toward retaining BruinGo!
Parking administrator Renee Fortier also encouraged carpooling,
citing its cost effectiveness.