Students will soon be able to hop on a bus to get to an off-campus restaurant on weekend nights, thanks to a program endorsed by Duke Student Government Wednesday.
The three-week pilot program, which will begin Jan. 25, was awarded $4,000 and will gauge student demand and help to determine if the service can be a permanent fixture on campus.
"Transportation sucks and there need to be more bus routes, more buses on campus and more buses off campus," said DSG President Elliott Wolf, a junior.
Under the pilot program, buses will run between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and will make stops at West Campus, Anderson Street, the intersection at Ninth and Perry Streets and by the Old Coke Building on Main Street-several blocks from Brightleaf Square.
Buses will cycle through three times in the course of an hour. The new bus route was initiated by seniors David Snider, DSG vice president for athletics and campus services, and Vijay Brihmadesam, DSG student services director.
Snider and Brihmadesam said the proposed route will address that fact that students on West and Central campuses feel isolated from Durham eateries and bars, and on-campus options are limited during the weekends.
Wolf said similar programs have been unsuccessfully implemented in the past.
"There's clearly been a demand expressed, but when past programs have been initiated, students didn't use them because they didn't know about them," Wolf added.
Snider and Brihmadesam said that after the three weeks they hope to identify vendors who benefit from the service and will help finance the route in the future.
The two representatives said that although they do not have any pre-conceived goals for the program, they believe it will serve a useful function.
"We think this is a service that students will use and will utilize," Brihmadesam said.
Senators also selected 10 representatives to serve on the Young Trustee Nominating Committee.
"They will all be expected to have a non-biased view for all the candidates and have the highest morals, integrity and confidentiality in the process," said sophomore Jordan Giordano, DSG vice president for community interaction.
In other business:
Senators unanimously voted to allocate $1,000 to the Claire Crowley Memorial Fund, in honor of the sophomore who was killed in a bike accident Dec. 23. The money will go toward the Duke University Women's Institute for Secondary Education for Muhuru Bay, Kenya.
Sophomore Alex Crable, chair of the Student Organization Finance Committee, did a first reading for a proposed fund that would allow DSG to use surplus money to purchase kegs for approved campus events.
Only DSG-chartered organizations would be permitted to receive two kegs and bartenders.
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