Board members will visit SafeRider operation room

Student Government Board Member Nila Devanath offered new ideas to improve the SafeRider… Student Government Board Member Nila Devanath offered new ideas to improve the SafeRider program at last night’s SGB meeting.

After meeting with SafeRider officials, Devanath learned that only one dispatcher works for SafeRider from Sunday to Wednesday, while two dispatchers work from Thursday to Saturday.

She also said two buses operate Sunday through Thursday, and three operate Friday through Saturday.

In addition to increasing the number of SafeRider phone lines, Devanath said she is currently looking into funding for increasing the number of employees and buses operating the SafeRider service.

Devanath said that on Saturday, Feb. 16, she and board member Gary Sanderson will sit in the SafeRider operation room around 1 or 2 a.m. “to check out SafeRider’s operations,” Devanath said.

Devanath and Sanderson are especially concerned with a phone backlog on SafeRider responses with so many people calling on one line.

Devanath also said that any Pitt student who wants to accompany her and Sanderson may contact her by e-mail or phone, available on the SGB website.

“I think that a lot of students are frustrated with SafeRider, and it’s very justified because nobody’s been paying attention to the system until the past two years,” Devanath said.

“I think watching what SafeRider is doing will help them understand the system.”

SGB Notes Board members Lacee Ecker and Amanda Reed said they were looking to recruit more colleges to participate in the U.S. Student Association’s Day of Action.

The organization will protest President Bush’s $18 billion budget cut in student financial aid programs for 2009 by sending valentines to Congress, asking them to “have a heart for higher education.”

According to a press release from the USSA, the $3.1 trillion budget “severely cut or eliminated 151 programs.” Pitt, which joined the USSA this year, will contribute 100 valentines for a nationwide total of 5,000 valentines to be sent to Congress on Feb. 14.

Environmental committee chair Thomas Hudzik said he currently is talking with Pitt’s manager of transportation to get University buses and shuttles to run on biodiesel fuel, which Carnegie Mellon buses and shuttles already use.

After missing last week’s meeting because he was stuck in a broken elevator in the William Pitt Union, board member Perry Servedio said he met with Facilities Management to campaign for better maintenance and inspection service for Pitt elevators.

Servedio said he found that full inspections of the 175 lifting devices on campus are conducted every three years, while less in-depth re-inspections take place every six months and preventative maintenance is conducted monthly.

“Everything there looked like it was in order,” Servedio said of Facilities Management’s procedures.

Servedio said he also plans on requesting that actual inspection certificates be placed in all elevators, instead of being displayed in another location.

In his closing remarks last night, Servedio wanted to read an excerpt from the forward of a 2008 SGB agenda he prepared, but did not because of the length of the meeting.

The rough copy of the agenda, due for release next week, appeared to be about one-quarter of an inch thick.

-Senior Staff Writer Drew Singer contributed to this report