#BeFare Committee Chairman Brandon Santiago explained in an interview with The Ticker that “the first one was for the New York City transit for MetroCard, so it’s just saying that we as students are being forced to pay a very high burden of rising fares and very bad service.”
He described the second resolution as building off the first one in that “Long Island Rail Road students have been suffering for a long time.”
“It’s not only unfair but also malpractice on the MTA’s part to have all these delays, charge all this money and then it’s just — we as students have to work to afford it,” Santiago said.
The third resolution is the ridesharing resolution.
“It’s the resolution that explicitly says Baruch supports our partnership with ridesharing companies” such as Via, Uber and Lyft, Santiago said.
The proposal states that “the quality of service with ridesharing is superior to the quality of service provided by the MTA.”
“With a reasonable discount per partnership, Via monthly and weekly passes would become more affordable than [a] MetroCard’s monthly and weekly passes,” Santiago said.
While the ridesharing resolution is a medium-term goal, Santiago explained that he is hopeful that CUNY students will have an affordable and equitable commuting process.
“Most of the committee members are freshmen so there’s plenty of time to achieve it,” Santiago said.
This is a community effort, as Santiago explained. He is trying to bring in administration officials as well so it’s not just students advocating “because in the end, they would also be impacted by this as well.”
Santiago spoke with LIRR President Phillip Eng on April 4, gathering information and submitting the recent USG co-sponsored LIRR resolution saying, “I believe we made progress toward #BeFare for Long Island students and left a lasting impression.”
On April 7 the University Student Senate altered the resolutions during its monthly meeting to make it their own so the resolutions USG passed reflect CUNY language. This would make the resolutions applicable to all CUNY schools.
Santiago also spoke briefly to USS representatives from Lehman College, Brooklyn College and Queens College and mentioned their USS is possibly trying to get a #BeFare Committee.
The next step for the #BeFare Committee is to send the resolutions to jurisdictional authorities such as the chancellor, the companies themselves and President Mitchel B. Wallerstein.
