Many UC Santa Cruz students can attest to the same few experiences with on-campus loop buses: torn bus seats patched up with duct tape, inconsistent waiting times and stuffy crowds during rush hour.
Despite this, UCSC students still pay $531 yearly for transportation — the highest fee in the UC system.
“These are issues that are directly impacting us,” said Tamanna Kaur, a second-year psychology major. “Unless the people who actually take the buses speak up about how they feel, you won’t see a solution.”
Hearing the widespread dissatisfaction from the student body, the UCSC Student Union Governance Board (SUGB) came together to propose Measure 82 in campus elections last spring.
The measure, which passed with 96.4 percent voter support, allocates 1.41 percent — about $7.60 per student annually — of the transportation fee to form a student-run governance board called Voices for Empowerment and Safety in Transportation (VEST). The board will act as a bridge between student voices and Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS), meeting twice per quarter to discuss transportation issues.
“We pay the most [out of all UC schools], yet we don’t get what we deserve from that,” said Ava Kim, a UCSC student and SUGB vice chair. “UC Davis’ on-campus transportation system is student-run, so that was a lot of where our inspiration came from. It is possible for students to take that power and lead by example.”
As of the date of publication, SUGB has established an interim VEST commission. They plan to begin the bi-quarterly meetings with TAPS in the winter.
Funding from the measure has not been allocated yet, due to the ongoing process of finalizing the representatives of the VEST committee. Kim says that funding will eventually compensate the committee and be directed toward finding professional staff. This includes data analysts and lawyers in order to assess TAPS’ delegation of students’ funds.
Kim hopes that when VEST begins its work in winter quarter, it will make the transportation system at UCSC more geared towards students’ needs.
“It’s easy to tell that students are frustrated,” Kim said. “Maybe it’s become a norm to the way that our university runs with the budget cuts and everything — I think it can be very numbing at times. I hope that [VEST] can serve as an example to students that we should speak up.”
We Asked You
While VEST continues to prepare to meet with TAPS, City on a Hill Press asked students about their thoughts on the student committee.
“There’s a variety of voices in this community at a school of 18,000 people. There’s no way that someone doing their nine to five desk job is ever going to be able to communicate with a significant sample of those people, whereas a committee of students at least has slightly wider ties and a slightly greater depth. They’re more invested in the student community that TAPS is meant to serve.” — Joan Rodrigues, fourth-year computer science major.
“A lot of things in this institution are very top down and [student empowerment is] sometimes the only way to make change. Otherwise decisions are being made by people who know nothing about the campus.” — Caishu Tian, fourth-year history of art and visual culture and art double major.