The account that funds the Georgetown University Transportation Services bus services on Saturday nights and Sundays is almost completely depleted, leaving the Georgetown University Student Association and the Student Activities Commission, whose Alumni Gift Account have funded the service for the past four years to question whether the service should be continued and, if so, where sustainable founding for it can be found.
“There is only a few thousand dollars left in the [Student Activities] Gift Account, and it will be depleted by the fall,” GUSA Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13) said. Malkerson suggested that the exhaustion of the Gift account was due to recent economic conditions.
“Trending with gifts across the board, the amount of gifts received by this account has gone down over the past couple of years,” Associate Director of Student Programs Bill McCoy wrote in an e-mail.
Photo by Max Blodgett
When the idea of weekend GUTS buses was first proposed in 2006, the University, which was already funding weekday and Saturday buses, did not agree to fund the new bus schedules. After the University refused to fund Saturday night and Sunday routes, the GUSA executive and SAC voted to allocate funding from the Alumni Gift Account, which consists of alumni donations towards student activities.
GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL’11) suggested that GUSA should first look at the ridership of the weekend buses to determine if students are using this service.
“Certainly, from the reaction of students, this is an important issue to look at,” Talbot said. If students really find it a valuable asset, the University should foot the bill.”
Talbot said that while using funds from the reserve accounts of student organizations is an option, he questioned whether GUSA, which operates on a $10,000 yearly budget, should be required to fund the service.
GUSA Senator Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) agreed with Talbot.
GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) said that while money from student organization reserves could provide emergency funding for the GUTS buses next year, it would be difficult to encourage the organization to keep giving money to the GUTS buses year after year.
“If SAC wants to pitch some of their reserve money towards it, that is their decision,” Angert said. “There is no way we can force any of the funding boards [to contribute].”
Instead, Angert is approaching administrators and offices in the Medical Center and Law Center to find out whether they would be willing to give money to the GUTS bus fund.
Erika Cohen-Derr, the Director of Student Programs, did not indicate whether SAC would take initiative in locating another funding source and encouraged student leaders to find other funding sources.
“I know they want to do what is right by students, but they also have to make difficult decisions about how to allocate resources,” she said.
