Upon seeing hoards of students battling with their peers for spots on the Health Sciences Campus shuttles, one can only wonder how we let such a crucial source of transportation fall under. Students enrolled in larger-lecture courses mob the shuttles during rush times when those Health Sciences Campus classes are held.

We now have to suffer the problems of backed-up shuttles and dis-serviced students. This problem, while it has been around for some time and has steadily worsened with the growing student body. With the coming of the Grand Bridge reconstruction project, it grows more crucial day by day that the administration work with students to resolve this issue.

Philip Alderson, Vice President for the Health Sciences Campus, is working to help students overcome this sticky situation. By gauging student reactions, researching ways to modify class times to allow students some leeway to take shuttles, and working as an advocate for students, he is putting forth a great and commendable effort to improve what the administration has recognized to be a headache for so many students.

Transportation Services is testing various alternate routes in an attempt to determine the best side streets for time-efficient shuttle transport. They are also observing student travel times to assess the need for more or fewer shuttles.

It is not acceptable that some peak times have insufficient shuttle service, while there are times when the shuttles carry no students at all.

Despite all of these efforts, few students are even aware that these intended improvements are underway. Alderson mentioned that he is counting on Student Government Association to garner student feedback, but no such outreach has come to the attention of the student body. The gap between the administrative groups and students yawns wide open on this issue; we need to see more outreach from the administration. We encourage them to open obvious and direct lines of communications between students and those working for our benefit.

We saw the massive amount of feedback that SGA received on the Pius Library initiative; it is not impossible to grab our attention and call upon us to do our civic duty to fill out a survey. Just as Chartwells had their representatives takings surveys directly in the dining areas with iPhones, Transportation Services already has people riding the shuttles and collecting student responses as they use the service; more such measures are highly desirable.

With the delay of the Grand Bridge reconstruction project, there is even more time to initiate these measures; there is more room for us, as a result, to work as a team.

On the reverse side, we call upon all students to reciprocate this kind of participation. Resolving problems requires us to work as a community of individuals – not as fractured and conflicting sides, one side being “administrators” and the other “the student body”.

If we wish to see better shuttle service that can take us to our destinations with greater ease, we need to see these projects to come out into the open with more direct student involvement. Meeting this kind of offering to us is our way to reciprocate. We stand in firm support of a conjugal arrangement to help us through what will assuredly be some tough times.