UC Berkeley students will vote this April during the 2012 ASUC general election on whether to extend the campus’ Class Pass, which gives students unlimited rides on AC Transit and Bear Transit buses.
The ASUC Senate voted Wednesday night in favor of a bill that places a referendum on the ballot asking students whether they support an extension of the pass, which is set to expire in 2013. If passed, the referendum would eventually increase the price of the pass from $79 to $86 per semester.
Debate over the bill at the senate meeting centered on a proposal from SQUELCH! Senator Noah Ickowitz to postpone the referendum until 2013 and employ a consulting group to assess the use of the pass by students.
16.3 percent of UC Berkeley students commuted to campus via AC Transit in spring 2008, according to the 2008 campus Student Housing & Transportation survey. However, no statistics exist concerning general ridership, according to Seamus Wilmot, campus director of parking and transportation.
Wilmot said AC Transit charges schools based on their student populations, providing better deals for schools with larger populations. However, the tier-based pricing system is capped at student populations of 10,000 — meaning that UC Berkeley pays the same per unit price as a school with a population about three and a half times less.
Ickowitz said he wanted to gather information about student ridership and use that information to renegotiate the pass contract and provide the campus with its own pricing tier. He was the only senator to vote against the bill.
ASUC President Vishalli Loomba said at the meeting that she did not believe there could be a negotiation process with AC Transit about the pass.
“Regardless of surveys of usage, there is a flat rate,” Loomba said.
But AC Transit spokesperson Clarence Johnson said the transit agency is “open to discussion and negotiation about practically everything.”
“What we’ve done with the class pass is a tremendous deal for students,” Johnson said. “It’s a win-win situation.”
The senators who voted in favor of the referendum expressed strong support for the bill and felt that Ickowitz’s proposed study of the pass program was unnecessary. Previously, the pass was approved by 80 percent of student voters in 2006 and 89 percent in 1999, according to the bill.
Students will decide the fate of the pass when they head to the polls April 10, 11 and 12.
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It would have been irresponsible to wait until the last minute (Spring 2013) to have a vote on whether or not to renew the program. In that case, students would be forced to either vote Yes or be stuck paying the full bus pass price in 2013-2014.
Now, if students are not happy with the current deal, they can vote No and the University could use this result to negotiate with AC Transit to bring a better deal next year.
There is nothing to lose whatsoever in asking students to weigh in on the Class Pass deal now. The SQUELCH! senator preferred the ASUC to debate this for one more year rather than simply asking the whole student body.
Well that’s not true. The way it had been done the last two referendums was voting next year, not this year. Students may also trust that there were negotiations of some sort with ac transit before this was put on the ballot, when there has been none. There’s nothing letting voters know that on this referendum, so they won’t necessarily know that context
The ASUC is a fucking joke. Always has been, always will be.
Why would they have ever passed this without negotiating. where are my fees going?
yee SQUELCH! posting in my own defense forevaaa