Rideline is once again operating on its normal nine-hour-a-day schedule thanks to funds sourced from student organizations who choose to hire the campus shuttle service.

Last semester, Oberlin Campus Safety cracked down on budget overexpenditure, leaving Rideline unable to cover all of its operational expenses and forcing the shuttle to operate on reduced hours. When budgeting for this semester, student clubs and organizations wishing to have Rideline available at a particular time could request funds from the Student Finance Committee to pay for Rideline to ensure the service is operational when needed. Although Rideline is covering much of its expenses with fees paid by particular student organizations, the service remains available for any student on campus during its hours of operation.

“In a similar way that Concert Sound charges a professional fee to clubs who need sound equipment or need that kind of expertise, student organizations are now able to request professional service, just like they would for any other service, from Rideline,” Student Supervisor for Campus Safety Nathaniel Liu said. 

Liu highlighted how this arrangement enables organizations requiring Rideline’s services to have guaranteed access by paying a fee.

“We have sports teams who practice [on] far North Campus and have students who [live on] far South Campus, and they might need regular access to Rideline, and the fix that has been worked out is they’re able to get access to Rideline through their club,” he said. “The club pays the fee using SFC funds and gives us a schedule of when they need those pickups.”

In previous semesters, Rideline operated solely on funding from Oberlin Campus Safety. After Campus Safety began enforcing budgetary spending restrictions last semester, Rideline was asked to keep spending within fixed limits. This left the shuttle service unable to cover all of its operational expenses, causing abrupt reductions in employee work hours and in the service’s hours of operation. The new arrangement allowing Rideline to accept funds from student organizations was developed to compensate for the shortfall in funds available from Campus Safety.

“In this budgeting session, which just concluded in December, it was the first time that organizations could request [funds for Rideline] in their budget,” College fourth-year Lucas Daley, former Student Finance Committee treasurer who oversaw SFC policy last semester, said.

The funds allocated about $18,000, or roughly 2 percent of SFC’s total budget to student organizations for Rideline.

Daley explained that SFC, Rideline, and Campus Safety worked together to develop the funding arrangement now in place. 

“We did a lot of work with Nathaniel in the Rideline office and with Eric Rooks, who is the director of Campus Safety,” he said. “We had some initial conversations: ‘Okay, this seems like something that would be a good idea, how can we make this work?’”

Liu said that the funding solution is only a temporary fix and he hopes Campus Safety will return to fully funding Rideline. 

“We want to provide nine hours of service a day; we want to provide the service that student organizations want, but this is a Campus Safety problem, and the Campus Safety budget should address that,” Liu said. “This is a temporary fix; it’s a stopgap solution that does address the needs of student organizations while also providing service to everybody. … I don’t think anyone wants this arrangement to continue for the foreseeable future.”