Image courtesy of Alice Ball.
If you have been in the graffitied basement that connects KB and Larrabee at all this semester, you have probably noticed the plenty of bikes currently occupying the space. These bikes belong to Spokespeople, a student-led on-campus sustainability group. The main goal of Spokespeople is to create a bike rental program that makes bikes more accessible for students and lessen the need for cars on campus while also teaching students how to fix bikes.
“Spokespeople has actually been around for a while, but was always more of a casual thing,” says Spokespeople president Alice Ball ‘22. Since the majority of Spokespeople members have graduated, it was a challenge for the club to keep going, especially in regard to skills. “Students who have graduated really had the necessary skills to fix bikes, but those skills were not passed down.”
This time, Ball and six other students want to give the program more structure. Most of the bikes have been donated by professors or from Niantic Bay Bicycles, and students are in the process of learning how to fix up the bikes to be ready for rent. “I’m hoping that this time we can learn the basic skills together and then teach one another so that the program can continue,” says Ball.
In fact, Spokespeople has partnered with Bike New London, a bike shop located on Williams Street, to learn proper bike maintenance and how to repair bikes. “A lot of us don’t have those basic skills, so it’s nice to form that connection with Bike New London and to be able to come back and apply what we learned to fix up the bikes,” Ball states. Spokespeople is also in the process of getting their Sustainability Projects Fund (SPF) approved to also have skateboards and scooters available for rent in the near future. Spokespeople is also planning to spend this funding on buying an outdoor bike toolkit so that students can fix their own bikes.
Ball hopes the initiative will expand to offer biking trips for students around New London. “There are a lot of really great biking routes around New London that not a lot of people know about.” While the program is still getting reestablished at the moment, Ball encourages people to still reach out if they are interested in renting a bike. By the time that rental program gets organized and gathers a lot of bikes to rent out, Ball hopes that the graffiti room becomes an informal space for people to have fun and to work on bikes.
If you are interested in joining Spokespeople, Ball encourages you to join even if you don’t have any biking experience. You can reach out to her via email at aball@conncoll.edu. Come learn to fix up a bike!
