While it is important for the Students’ Association to have an ambitious and far-reaching platform, the small conveniences they provide are equally important and well appreciated by the student body. This Thanksgiving break, the Projects and Services Commitee helped alleviate the pressure many students feel about finding a way to get home for the holiday by taking two initiatives: promoting the ride board for students driving and organizing a shuttle to the airport for those flying.
Before Thanksgiving break, students used their Net IDs to sign into the ride board and find other students that either needed a ride or could provide a ride. This proved to be a good concept from an environmental standpoint, reducing the amount of cars traveling to the same places, but it also saved students money on gas.
For students flying, shuttle schedules were available in the SA office, on the Hive Web site and posted all over the walls and bulletin boards. Shuttles looped from ITS to the airport on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving and the Sunday following, allowing students to save money they would have spent on cabs.
Neither of these two ideas were new – both the ride board and the airport shuttle have been in existence for years – but the SA improved on these existing ideas by both publicizing them extensively and making sure they were comprehensive programs that were easy for students to use. Both the shuttles and the ride board were advertised all over the River Campus, in UR publications, on Web sites and in e-mails. And, because students knew about what was available to them, they were able to utilize the programs well.
This past holiday proved that when the SA can provide a small, convenient service they should jump on the chance to do so and follow up by publicizing it well. Students may not feel connected to the big projects the SA works hard on, but they do remember the little things that made their day easier.
