To see a video on the SG senators using Campus Transit, click here.
Nine Student Government senators gathered together in the parking lot of Parker Coliseum Wednesday evening, anxiously waiting for Campus Transit to arrive. In an attempt to highlight the campus shuttle’s service and evaluate its effectiveness, SG senator Andy Palermo, University Center for Advising and Counseling, arranged for Campus Transit to bring the senators to their meeting and pick them up afterward. “We’re doing this to raise awareness in the student body that this service is available to them,” Palermo said. “Not enough students know about it.”Palermo began to show signs of nervousness when the shuttle didn’t arrive until five minutes after the scheduled pick-up. Palermo received five busy signals before getting in touch with the Transit Operator. “I did call … and the number was busy, but on the sixth time they answered, and they got there in five minutes,” Palermo said. “The overall experience was very nice.”Palermo said it is hard to test its  effectiveness from a planned event.”We’re going to set something up that the Parking Office doesn’t know about so we can test for flaws,” Palermo said. Gary Graham, director of the Office of Parking, Traffic and Transportation, said the event was a “great idea.””We encourage students to use transit, but surprisingly, not a lot of people know about it,” Graham said. Transit carries “about 400 students a night,” Graham said.”When you have seven or eight thousand students living on campus, that’s not a lot,” Graham said. Sarah Scharfenstein, psychology sophomore, said SG’s ride to raise awareness was a good idea. “I really don’t know anything about transit,” Scharfenstein said. “But there have been times when I’ve definitely needed it.” —-Contact Katie Kennedy at [email protected]