Throughout the fall semester, Student Council developed a number of initiatives and projects seeking to improve the University community, and Council aims to continue such efforts next year.
“We’ve tried to empower students to take ownership of their student experience,” Council President Matt Schrimper said, “That is reflected in a lot of the things that we’ve been able to do.”
One of Council’s main goals during this semester has been improving student safety and student life off-Grounds.
“Off-Grounds safety has been a primary focus for us this year,” Schrimper said. “As a Student Council we took it upon ourselves to embrace the off-Grounds community as a part of our community in addressing student safety.”
One of programs Council created to improve student safety was the FreeRide program, which provides students with free Yellow Cab taxi rides between the hours of 12 a.m. and 4 a.m.
“To be honest, we’ve gotten a lot of positive responses and we’ve also heard some negatives,” said Katie Peabody, Safety & Wellness Committee chair. “There are a lot of students who didn’t know about the program, which was really a breakdown of communication, so hopefully that’s being cleared up.”
Fourth-year College student Bryan Kitz said he thinks the program could improve student safety because some students might be deterred from using Safe Ride for fear of getting in trouble with police officers.
“The importance should be getting home safely, not whether or not you’re going to get in trouble and [this program] can help alleviate that fear, which I know a lot of people have,” Kitz said.
Kitz added, though, that he is unsure how popular the program will become.
“It’s good to know that it’s there for those people who do use it, but I don’t think it will be used that frequently,” Kitz said.
Another project Council started to help alleviate students’ stress was the “Don’t Sign It” campaign, which seeks to alleviate pressure students feel to sign leases early in the school year.
“The concrete progress that we’ve seen this semester is that we’ve been able to sit down two of the major landlords and reach some sort of agreement in terms of making it more of an accommodating situation for both the renting companies and the students,” said Sam Davies, Building & Grounds Committee chair.
Davies added that his committee has organized a symposium to be held next fall during which Charlottesville landlords will speak to first-year students about the lease-signing process.
“It’s by no means an end result but it’s a step in the right direction,” Davies said. “Next fall we’ll step up our publicity campaign again and more than anything just get the word out there.”
Council also created the Free Newspaper Project, which provides students with free copies of USA Today and The New York Times in order to give students better access to national and international news.
“I think the program has really achieved its goal as serving as a resource for students,” said Architecture Rep. Steven Reilly, who organized the program. “We’ve distributed 1,300 papers a day and [run] out [of] The New York Times every single day at every location. We did surveys before and after the start of the program and pretty much all around showed that students are interested in the program.”
Reilly noted, however, that the future of the program is currently uncertain.
“Our main issue right now is funding; after we run out of the current money we’ve allotted for it, we’re not sure how we can go about funding it,” Reilly said. ”But that is something we’ll be thinking about over the next few weeks and the next semester.”
Second-year College student Rebecca Dellen said she thinks the newspaper program has been beneficial.
“It’s nice that Student Council is actually spending money so we can be informed on issues,” Dellen said. “It’s so easily accessible; I think especially in a place like U.Va., students do want to know what’s going on around them.”
Another program Council started this semester, which worked to increase University outreach efforts to the Charlottesville community, is the Arts Education Program. Through this program, Council members teach young students in the local community about art.
“We had our first program last Thursday; we went to the Boys and Girls Club, and the kids were really receptive to us,” Student Arts Committee Chair Jenny Smith said. “We think it will really succeed both on the level of connecting with the community and also with enriching those children’s educations. What we’re going to be working on next semester is creating two more programs and making them more regular.”
Council already has held its last meeting for the semester, but Schrimper said he hopes Council will continue to focus on the University community and University unity once classes resume.
“You will continue to see more new and unique initiatives come out of Student Council, but I think the underlining theme should be that we’ve tried to encourage the empowerment of students,” he said.
Council will continue to work on its new projects and legislation at its next meeting in January, Schrimper noted.
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