An Oct. 23 Independent article reported that the Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) Administration President, Dr. Sharon K. Hahs and the NEIU Student Government Association (SGA) President, Keenan Arnold could not find a way to make the U-Pass a reality for NEIU. Citing difficulties in determining where funding would be allocated, Hahs claims to be working on the issue, but feels the “mechanism” for instituting a U-Pass program just isn’t right. The university has also been failing to keep their promises regarding student representation on various committees, lacking the ability to even produce a list on which representation would be forthcoming. The one issue where Hahs and Arnold have made progress, it seems, is in assurances that the SGA will be in on early discussions for tuition increases. Huh?
Well, in a nutshell, meetings between NEIU President Hahs and newly-elected SGA President Arnold have gleaned nothing for NEIU students but a promise for tuition hikes. Huzzah!
That same Independent article also uncovered that the two attempts by the SGA, a referendum added to an election where only 700 students voted and an incomplete “unscientific” survey, seemed to do little to convince the administration that a U-Pass program is needed right away. Well, sometimes it takes a serious effort to get concrete results. How about if the 20 senators, and their Prez and other SGA executives, each get a clipboard and take a week to position themselves at each entrance to the school ,during all school hours and get enough signatures to let this administration know they are serious about a U-Pass program? There are about 12,000 students at NEIU and with 24 clipboards, that works out to 500 signatures each. Can they get all 12,000? Doubtfully. But there is no way to know how many they can get if they do not even try.
Regarding the U-Pass, here is something not everyone seems to know. Over 40 Chicago and Chicago-area schools participate in a U-Pass program, many of them that aren’t strictly commuter schools like NEIU, including Columbia College, Chicago, DePaul University, Harold Washington College, Illinois Institute of Art, Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University, Malcolm X College, National-Louis University, Northwestern University, Robert Morris College, Roosevelt University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Truman College, University of Illinois at Chicago, Westwood College, and Wright College. Recognize a few of the names? Those are schools that apparently care enough about their students and the environment to institute a U-Pass program. Those are schools that found a way to make it happen.
But the one thing we can be assured of is that the tuition hikes are apparently around the corner. Those can apparently happen without any assurances that a U-Pass program will be in place soon. Perhaps not surprising, since the current tuition rate for undergrads is $156 per credit hour, it is up from $125 just five years ago, and they managed not to spend any of that money on a U-Pass program. In that same time, the parking fees at NEIU have more than doubled, but none of that money has been spent on a U-Pass program. How on this poor, beleaguered earth can those claiming to be working for the support of the students not see that a program for public transportation assistance in the form of a U-Pass is imperative? It has to be done without any more delay or equivocation.