RUSA sets agenda for comprehensive reform

When President Richard L. McCormick and top administrators attended a Rutgers University Student Assembly forum in November, campus council leaders stood up one after the other and repeated common concerns they received through campus-wide surveys they conducted.
Administrators will return to RUSA on Feb. 25 to present a response that will include things they can do, cannot do because of cost and could do if students are willing to pay additional fees. For the last couple of months, we have been working within the administration to come up with responses to literally every single thing that was raised, whether it’s libraries, dining halls, transportation, academic programs or public safety,” McCormick said.
The most common concern raised at the forum was transportation, but McCormick said additional funds would be needed to add buses. Administrators will present a list of possible changes and their cost per student to RUSA.
“The priority routes were the B, the LX and the express routes [REXL and REXB],” said Jack Molenaar, director of Transportation and Parking Services.
The B route, which added a bus at the beginning of this semester, is the only route that has to meet a 20-minute class change need, Molenaar said.
Molenaar estimates it would cost $544,000 to improve those three routes.
Full-time students pay $127.50 per year for the transportation fee, Molenaar said.
“To increase bus service on those three routes and cover our other costs [such as a scheduled increase in the University’s bus contract], the proposed fee would an increase … to [an estimated] $154.25,” he said.
RUSA Chair Werner Born said students would consider an increase in the transportation fee if it would lead to substantial improvements.
Improving weekend service, which includes two buses on three routes by adding a bus to each route, could cost an estimated $265,000, Molenaar said. Adding a bus would change the frequency from 18 minutes to 12 minutes.
“At a price like that … it will really depend on what the specifics are, but I know six minutes off of the wait time is a pretty big [change],” Born said.
RUSA also asked for increased library hours, improved access to computers, more cleanliness in classrooms and more parking.
Students wanting libraries to stay open later on all campuses got their wish, McCormick said. But the administration does not plan on opening libraries 24 hours every day.
The University provided additional funding to extend the hours of Alexander Library on the College Avenue campus and the Library of Science and Medicine on Busch campus until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.
The University extended the hours of the Douglass Library and the Kilmer Library on the Livingston campus by two hours until 2 a.m. Sunday to Thursday.
“The students need and want [increased hours] … and we try to be responsive whenever we can,” said Judith Gardner, head of University Libraries Access and Interlibrary Services. “I think it’s great. I hope that students make use of the increased hours.”
The Office of Information Technology is adding computer labs to the new residence halls on Busch and Livingston, McCormick said. Computers in the Douglass library will be upgraded to have swipe access to printers by this semester.
Other requests were smaller, and the University was able to implement the changes.
The University increased the semi-annual printing allowance for students in their third, fourth or fifth years in the pharmacy program in January, from $30 to $45 in response to the presentation from the Pharmacy Governing Council.
Bo Wang, president of the Pharmacy Governing Council, said his classmates appreciated the changes and were impressed by how quickly the University responded.
He said the University is committed to do a better job with maintenance of classroom buildings like Allison Road Classroom Building and Science and Engineering Resource Center on Busch campus.
Vice President for Facilities and Capital Planning Antonio Calcado said the University is stepping up patrols of restrooms and heavily used classrooms in those areas.
Shaival Shah, president of the Busch Campus Council, said he has noticed some improvements to the SERC bathrooms, but the engineering building is still dirty.
The administration acknowledges that cleaner dishes are needed in the Busch Dining Hall, McCormick said.
“The dishwashing machine has been replaced and the management is working to improve the [cleaning] processes,” he said.
But in response to calls for increased dining hours, the administration will say no.
“At present, the dining halls operate 17 hours continuously. No change in operation is currently planned,” McCormick said.
Upcoming transformations to the College Avenue and Livingston campuses would have a dramatic impact on the feel of the New Brunswick campus, he said.
But the College Avenue Greening Project has been scaled back from plans, which called for a portion of the street to be confined to buses and emergency vehicles.
“I’m sort of deflated by [the street remaining two-ways], because where I started was a vision for a pedestrian College Avenue without vehicular traffic,” McCormick said.
he Greening Project will now include a major landscape architecture renovation, he said.
“We will replace the ugly bus stop in front of the College Avenue Gym, we will get rid of the parking meters on College Avenue … and it will look a whole lot better, but the basic transportation aspects will not be changed,” McCormick said.
Phase one of the project will span from Senior Street to Bishop Place, and as a result of the changes to the plans there will be no long-term shut down to College Avenue, he said. There may be days when motorists have to take a detour, but much of the work will take place during off-peak hours.
“The project is going forward right now,” McCormick said. “And you’ll actually see it underway visibly by April, and it should be substantially completed by the beginning of the next academic year.”
The Greening Project will not disrupt parking for students, projects on Livingston and Busch campuses could create a parking shortage.
“The University’s position is that we do have enough parking [right now]. There’s never a time when students cannot find a parking space in the student lots at Livingston,” McCormick said. “Students don’t like that, they want to park where they want to park, but we’re not set up to do that.”
But the University will lose many spaces on the Livingston and Busch campuses as a result of building new residence halls.
“We’re going to need to build parking decks,” McCormick said. “We have to replace lost parking, and there will probably be a gap. There will probably be a several-year period when parking spaces are lost [because of the residence halls], and we haven’t caught up.”
But McCormick said the University is committed to solving the problem.
“We have a consultant who’s trying to figure out where the traffic impacts are going to be and what the parking demand is, so we don’t have an answer for that yet,” Molenaar said.
McCormick also discussed veteran students’ benefits, noting that veteran students waiting for their benefits to be processed will not be penalized.
“Veterans will no longer be dropped from courses due to non-payment of tuition and fees while their veterans benefits are being processed,” McCormick said.
The RUSA leadership did a very good job of getting all of the campus student organizations that are represented in RUSA to poll their members on student concerns, he said.
“I had not anticipated that this academic year would include a comprehensive effort to address student concerns on the New Brunswick campus, maybe I should have, but RUSA did and the results are very good,” McCormick said.