On June 18, students at the University of Chicago received a dreaded yet expected email from Michele Rasmussen and Eric Heath. In perhaps the most heart-rending administrative action in years, the University moved to abolish the beloved Lyft Ride Smart program, which provided free Lyft rides around Hyde Park to UChicago students. Pivotal to the UChicago experience for years, the Lyfts have been mercilessly cut and will be replaced by something called Via, a glorified cattle car convoy that will haul students around in a network of cramped and thoroughly delayed vans.
It has become common knowledge that UChicago is currently more broke than the quad drainage system last spring.Seemingly endless gorging on multiple flashy buildings, faceless bureaucrats, and clinically wasteful programs that would make a Soviet republic blush has caused UChicago’s spending to be put on a diet. We have been condemned to attend UChicago in an era of budget cuts, but even so, the decision to cut arguably the most popular program at the school is particularly cruel.
It’s no secret that our school isn’t exactly situated in the safest of locales. The University has a legal and moral imperative to promote safety, and the Lyft program was unequivocally a pivotal part of that effort. Three members of the UChicago community were shot and killed in 2021 alone and when the third of those killings occurred in November, the Lyft program in its familiar form was rolled out in just a month (See? The University can work quickly!). Since then, despite the continued plague of robberies on and around campus, there have thankfully been no crime-related deaths of UChicago community members. The thought of that trend reemerging is particularly sinister, but it’s a potential effect of the University’s decision that we must consider.
Not to worry: our benevolent administrative overlords have left us with a compelling alternative!With Via, instead of point-to-point and on-demand rides, we’ll be forced to sit awkwardly on long car rides with people we don’t know and don’t want to be around. In an environment eerily reminiscent of a Breaking Bad RV ride (and not in a cool way), we’ll be packed into clunky vehicles that students from other schools say take 30-45 minutes to arrive. Imagine having to wait for a ride for over half an hour outside Reg on a freezing December night before finals, just to be collected by a dodgy van surrounded by classmates you kind of know but don’t say hi to, intoxicated partygoers, and friends of people you don’t like who stare at your phone as you scroll away. Enchanting!
Perhaps the worst aspect of Via is that it is school-run. Seeing the disaster the UGo Shuttle system has been, it’s clear UChicago is totally unequipped to solve the transportation issue on its own. It must outsource this task to a competent organization, or we’ll be without an adequate transportation option for the foreseeable future. Even if a miracle occurs and Via is one day functional, the school’s inability to properly administer transportation means it will inevitably take years, and since most of us will have graduated by that point, we lose.
In spring, I ran a campaign for Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President primarily focused on protecting the Lyft program. Despite having no prior experience in USG, I decided to run after witnessing the egregious betrayal of student interests by current USG representatives. The band of StuCo halfwits put up an initial effort to advocate for the Lyft program (a generous description given that the webpage was never even completed), but by January 2024 they had completely succumbed to the wishes of the administration. After realizing that nobody would speak out to challenge the Lyft program’s destiny for disposal, I felt compelled to step up.
Ultimately, we came up fewer than eighteen votes short, enough to condemn the Lyft program to a sad, quiet death. Illicit personal attacks certainly played a role in manipulating the result, a flaw in the process many believe the rules committee was reluctant to address wholeheartedly. Despite this, the amount of support I received from people who didn’t know me personally told me that I had made the right choice to run.
It’s a fantastic question as to whether or not those who presently occupy USG are just incompetent or if they are maliciously corrupt. Their lousy about-face on advocating for Lyfts was disappointing, but the idiotic hoax they peddled about getting a free Lyft pass after waiting for a small amount of time for a Via (10, 15, or 20 minutes depending on who you asked and the time of day) was truly stunning. There was no apparatus to instantaneously administer Lyft passes and the administration made no mention of this supposed concession when trying to sell the student body on Via. My perception of USG members’ intellects was not particularly high before that but the staggering degree of naivete required to believe in such an obviously fallacious proposal made me ponder whether they actually knew they were selling us out or if they were just really, really dumb.
Alas, in lieu of a real fight, we’ve lost the Lyft program. Even if Via is as colossal a failure as I predict, I don’t believe it will be enough to compel the administration to bring the Lyfts back. This transition will undoubtedly stamp out socialization at the place where fun goes to die and boost the prevalence of preventable crime. Part of me believes that UChicago is the best university in the world but a different part feels fortunate to only have a year left. This feeling is shared broadly among the student body, and the administration would be wise to address it.
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Author: Christopher Phillips
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