By Jessica Chung
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
Chancellor Albert Carnesale was present at the Graduate Students
Association meeting on Wednesday to speak on the problem of where
to get the money for the continuance of BruinGo!.
The free busing system used by staff, faculty, and many students
to travel from their homes to campus, BruinGo! was preserved for
another year, largely due to the exhortations of student
organizations and individual students.
Carnesale received 200 e-mails from students expressing their
desire to keep BruinGo!. According to Carnesale, only 20 percent of
these students said they need the buses because they do not have a
car, whereas the other 80 percent seem to use the buses simply
because they are free.
The original purpose of BruinGo! was to save money and lower the
demand for parking, which it did only to a small degree, according
to Carnesale.
“I think it’s a good program and I think we should
continue to use the funds we originally allocated for it,”
said first-year political science student Tamika Hunter.
Carnesale acknowledged that BruinGo! was a good thing overall.
However, the only problem with the busing system was who would pay
for it.
“I don’t pay for it. The state doesn’t pay for
it. The people who pay for campus parking pay for it,”
Carnesale said.
“The only thing I am not eager about is taking money from
people who pay for campus parking to also pay for people who want
to take the bus just because it’s free. It doesn’t seem
fair,” Carnesale said.
Although GSA Internal Vice President Dorothy Kim said she agrees
that the problem with BruinGo! is how to get the money to pay for
it, she believes that they should concentrate more upon how much
they will have to pay.
“Since it is decided that we are going to keep BruinGo!
next year, the issue is no longer why we should keep it or not, but
how we are going to pay for it. Before we decide how we are going
to pay for it, we first need to see what the approximate cost will
be,” Kim said.
According to Carnesale, there is no financial reason to choose
student parking over taking the bus. Even with a bus fare, the
overall cost of taking the bus for one year is much lower than the
cost of student parking for one year.
Also addressed at the GSA meeting was the decision of what to do
with the excess money that the GSA will have next year. By raising
its fees from $7 to $10, GSA expects a 30 percent increase in its
budget from last year. Added to this is the $10,000 that GSA
regained in Associated Students of UCLA subsidies.
“We recently discussed giving the subsidies back to the
government because we’re doing really well without it,”
said GSA President Charles Harless. “Chances are that
they’ll tell us to keep it, but it’s a gesture to show
that we support ASUCLA.”
In addition, the new GSA officers were sworn in at the meeting.
Harless and Kim have retained their positions for another year.
Last year’s external vice president Alain Dang, who is
graduating this year, is being replaced by Hanish Rathod. One board
position out of 28 total positions will remain unfilled this
year.