As a school located just outside Boston, Providence and New York City, as well as numerous other smaller, yet just as exciting cities, Connecticut College does all that it can for its students to ensure that we can experience everything that New England has to offer. This is why the College offers the Camel Van, a free shuttle service that makes stops at locations such as Crystal Mall, Target, Wal-Mart and the Waterford Regal Cinemas. However, at the end of this school year the current contract Connecticut College has with Legends and Alumni Limousine, the company operating the service, will expire. In response, the College recently began the process of looking for a new company to continue running the shuttle into 2014-2015.
The future of the Camel Van’s contract is an issue being handled by the Student Life Advisory Committee, a group of student leaders and staff co-chaired by Scott McEver, Director of Student Engagement and Leadership Education, and Ted-Steinberg ’16, vice-president of the student body. McEver explained that, though the College had a good experience working with Legends, “there’s nothing that binds us to Legends.” The committee is interested in gauging the students’ input on the Van.
Not only does Legends run the Camel Van, but they’re also the company used for discounted student rides to local airports and train stations before Thanksgiving, winter, spring and summer breaks. McEver explained that these discounted prices will most likely be factored into the new contract, as these rides are popular amongst students who need to do more traveling in order to get home for breaks.
Steinberg, too, has a lot of stock in student input on the issue at hand, although for a different vein of reasoning. A self-proclaimed government nerd, Steinberg has identified in the Camel Van a spotlight opportunity for the SGA to show it’s worth and fluid ability to translate the wants of the student body into realities. “The students here have serious ownership in the process of improving student life. This is one of those moments which is really exciting for SGA,” said Steinberg. “We can make the Camel Van anything we need it to be.”
The possibility of reviewing the Camel Van arose in response to the ever-present campus murmurs of discontent with the service. It has become notorious for it’s unreliability, at times comically so. “We’ve all experienced problems with the Camel Van before,” said Kristina Harrold ’16. “Everybody groans about it.” When students are finding the Camel Van unreliable, it is helpful to communicate with the SGA or SELE, instead of waiting for problems to slowly come in. “We don’t know about [issues] when they happen,” said McEver.
The history of the Camel Van begins the early ‘90s, as a service based upon paid-student drivers using college owned cars. Eventually, the drivers transformed into part-time workers rather than students, though the cars were still college-owned. McEver explained that these different formats of the Camel Van “didn’t always serve us the best.” This year marks the third year that the Camel Van program has been outsourced.
The contract with Legends will expire at the end of the school year, and already requests for proposals for quotes have been sent out to a number of different local and regional companies, so the committee will have a pool of options from which to take the best bid. McEver and Steinberg both hope the future service will include some form of GPS students can use to locate the Camel Van as they wait to be picked up. “We have a lot of suggestions to work with right now, and have been receiving extremely helpful support from outside faculty, like Victor Arcelus and CC Curtis,” said Steinberg.
Steinberg outlined what an ideal model for the future Camel Van service might look like: “It should be more reliable, the GPS tracking will help with that, and circuit more often. It should have an extra stop in South and a great route built around the desires of the student body. We need to table and poll the student input, so the Camel Van satisfies the wide range of requested locations.”
McEver said that, besides being budget-friendly, the new contract will hopefully include one, if not two, of the vans being wheelchair accessible, ensure the reliability of the employees and an outline for the proposed GPS system.
SGA is earnestly looking for solutions to re-integrate the shuttle service into the community, understanding that part of the problem is that the outsourced service feels like an experience disconnected from the college. “The Van doesn’t even have our logo on it,” explained Steinberg, “People don’t feel familiar with it.” Finding the schedule for the service has never been too clear either. “The fact that nobody knows when it runs is a problem. The van should be a bigger aspect of our student life.”
Steinberg is optimistic of the Camel Van’s future, and reflected the potential the Camel Van has to be really valuable to the college community. A more travelled and comfortable shuttle service will improve quality of campus life as well as open up the college’s relationship to New London.
