Courtesy of Kevin Lieue ’26
On Tuesday, September 30th, Connecticut College Dean of Students, Victor Arcelus, sent out an email with the subject line “Updates to Lyft and SEAT Transportation Programs” to the entire student body. The email went on to detail what the rumor mill had been spreading for a few days, that Conn had made the decision to end the College’s provision of four free one-way Lyft passes a month to students to be used in the greater New London and Waterford areas, effective October 31st of this year.
Students immediately took to campus’s anonymous social media platform, YikYak, to lambaste the decision and declare their support for the continuation of the program. A protest outside the Crozier-Williams College Center was proposed, but did not end up occurring.
One of our news section editors was able to sit down with Dean Arcelus in the week after the decision was announced, for a transparent conversation on the decision making process and next steps for both students and the administration.
Dean Arcelus opened the interview by highlighting Conn’s continued partnership with Lyft for select programs, including free Lyft rides to downtown New London and back to campus for Manwaring residents, as well as rides to Union Station, and transportation for medical purposes.
He acknowledged that the College has been going through a redistribution process for the budget for some time, and this summer was primarily dedicated to budget, efficiency, and waste among all of the College’s programming and expenditures, as acknowledged in President Andrea Chapdelaine’s “September Update” email to students on September 2nd. Dean Arcelus candidly shared that the Lyft program was costing the college $100,000 per year, a substantial investment for the College at a time where enrollment across all universities is low, and institutional costs are increasing. “Between a ride on the SEAT (Southeast Area Transit) bus, which costs less than $2 a person per ride, and a private Lyft ride that can cost up to $15, it is simply no contest,” he stated. “We are, of course, looking at budgets, but we have other priorities for our spending. Let’s keep students on campus and make their experience here stronger.”
However, he went on to add, this move for the College was about a lot more than budgetary considerations. Dean Arcelus brought up the formerly-utilized Camel Van shuttle system, in which Connecticut College-sponsored vans would run on a continuous loop between campus, downtown New London, the Target in Waterford, and other major locations around the area, for a certain number of hours each day. That program was replaced by the existing Lyft system when it was deemed to be inefficient due to low ridership, lack of sustainability, and overall wastefulness due to the gas and labor requirements of the setup. Dean Arcelus shared that “back then, Lyft was more efficient, but now, we’re looking for a more community-driven approach.”
Instead of the Lyft passes, Conn will look to utilize the SEAT bus system, which the College already provides students with free passes for. The SEAT bus has several lines in the area: the route 1 bus travels right down Williams Street, with a stop outside the Arboretum, and takes riders to downtown New London (notably stopping at Union Station). There, riders may switch over to the 14 bus, which travels to parts of Waterford and Groton, including to the Target in the area. There is heavy overlap between the SEAT bus and the College’s Lyft program: both are accessible from campus, but the SEAT bus travels within a broader geographic area than the Lyft passes currently extend to. “When we’re looking at an expense that is duplicative, and there is a robust option at a much lower cost, we would rather be able to spend that money on the on-campus student experience,” Dean Arcelus summarized.
This shift is part of a conscious effort to engage more heavily with the local New London community, Dean Arcelus shared. In conversations with Connecticut College alumni and current Mayor of New London, Michael Passero (‘79), both men acknowledged a mutual desire for a stronger partnership between the city and Conn, and this goal is not exclusive to Conn: the new Coast Guard Academy superintendent shared this same goal for the Coast Guard cadets in a recent meeting with President Chapdelaine, Dean Arcelus, and Dean of the Faculty, Danielle Eagan.
Dean Arcelus also pointed out that Connecticut College student ridership on the SEAT bus allows for improvements to be made to the New London public transit system: “when the City of New London goes to Hartford and asks for an expanded public transportation budget, they have to be able to point to their ridership numbers to back up that request. We are not doing as much as we can as a part of this community to support these efforts when we continue to utilize an independent transportation system.” Dean Arcelus also acknowledged the positive environmental and sustainability impact of using a preexisting public transportation system rather than private vehicles for each group of students attempting to leave campus. This is consistent with the College’s recent efforts to discourage students from driving around and further pedestrianize campus, which Dean Arcelus describes as part of a larger effort to do more for sustainability in New London.
The College is giving students until the end of the month to finish using their Lyft passes and familiarize themselves with how to take the SEAT bus. Conn is also partnering with SEAT to make the public transit experience more efficient, straightforward, and enjoyable for students: “We are working with SEAT on an education process that includes updating their website, making videos to help students understand how to use the apps necessary to ride the SEAT bus, speaking with Token Transit to make it easier for students to download ride passes, and other changes to what can otherwise be a multi-step and slightly confusing process,” Dean Arcelus shared. “We are also talking with SEAT about bringing a bus onto campus for students to familiarize themselves with, and I personally will be taking the SEAT routes within the next week to assess what the overall experience will look like for students.”
A stop for the route 14 bus will also be added by SEAT onto the corner of Briggs and Williams Streets, so that students do not have to switch over from the 1 bus to the 14 at Union Station in downtown New London.
In response to a question regarding the safety of students who may be using the SEAT bus after dark, Dean Arcelus commented that “to my knowledge, I have not heard of any safety concerns on the public transportation buses. We are a city, and there are problems that may come up as there would be in any city, but in my conversations with the Chief of Police and the Mayor, as well as in my own experiences, that is not something we are overly concerned about at this time. If students come to learn anything in particular through their experience, then we can most certainly address it with the City of New London and the SEAT program as a whole.”
Dean Arcelus shared that the bottom line for the College is that “we want to educate students on how to use the system. I can understand how for students who have never taken the SEAT bus, or any public transportation bus before, it could be intimidating and anxiety producing to do so. In a sense, there is also an opportunity here for students to get accustomed to using public transportation, because many of you are going to move to cities where you are going to depend on public transportation, so if you can become accustomed to that here, all the better.” Students have suggested that a partnership with SEAT during Common Experience would be a beneficial opportunity for first-year students to learn how to use New London public transit when they initially arrive on campus.
He closed out the conversation by saying that we at Connecticut College have a unique “opportunity as a NESCAC in an urbanized area: places like Middlebury, Colby run their own transportation system because they have to, but we don’t- we have an opportunity not given to a lot of schools like ours. Campuses across New England where there are preexisting transit systems are leveraging it to provide for both students and the community. At Colby, for example, they have to build their own shuttle system at great expense because there is no public transit alternative. To the degree that we have the SEAT bus, it stops right by our campus, it is a resource that we want our students to be familiar with.”
The Student Government Association (SGA) will be partnering with Dean Arcelus and colleagues to host an open forum regarding the decision to roll back the Lyft pass system on Thursday, October 16th, at 7:15 p.m. in the Ernst Common Room in Blaustein. All members of the campus community are welcome to attend, or feedback can be submitted anonymously to SGA via Google Form sent out to students on October 3rd.
