The approved resolution, which came out of the benefits committee, supports a proposal from the Apartment Family Student Council, which asks for the reinstitution of some E bus route service to College Mall.
The Student Transportation Board removed College Mall from the E bus route last year.
This change allowed the bus to circulate the central area of campus every 30 minutes instead of every 60 minutes, according to the GPSG resolution.
Benjamin Draper, benefits officer for GPSG, said AFSC approached GPSG President Benjamin Verdi for support, spurring members of the benefits committee to write a resolution backing up AFSC’s resolution.
The GPSG resolution requests at least one trip to College Mall on the E bus every weekend or similar increased service to College Mall on the E bus in general.
“The AFSC has a proposal that they sent to us that we read through,” Draper said. “It’s very similar to our resolution that we would pass within GPSG, so we didn’t feel the need to fully rewrite everything they did. We just decided to pledge our support to help them reach some type of compromise with the STB.”
Residents of apartment complexes represented by AFSC, including Redbud Hill and Evermann, Tulip Tree and University East, must currently transfer from the E bus to the 9 bus at the Wells Library bus stop to travel to College Mall, according to the GPSG resolution.
They can also walk from their apartments to a 9 bus stop on 10th Street, which can be more than a half-mile.
Matt Walker, GPSG representative for the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, is also a coordinator assistant for Redbud apartments and works in close association with the AFSC.
He spoke in favor of the resolution before the assembly moved into a voting session.
“This area of Redbud and Evermann apartments, you have apartments that house a large international community,” Walker said. “There are many families there. They don’t really have a bus on the weekend to take them to go grocery shopping.”
Many students choose to live on campus in these particular apartments because they need to have reliable forms of transportation to get where they need to go on campus, Draper said.
Walker added that many don’t have cars.
“They have to walk about a mile or half-a-mile to get from that 9 bus from 10th Street all the way home to their apartment complex,” Walker said. “Many of these people have children, so they’ve got hands full of groceries while they’re trying to keep track of their children. People speed down the roads. This is a very big problem.”
Draper said GPSG members do not expect full E bus service to College Mall to be instituted.
“With any decision that’s made on campus there’s a lot of factors,” Draper said. “As long as there’s some kind of compromise made, I think the entire GPSG assembly would be happy.”
