MAY 1, 2025 | NEWS | By Margaret Freeman & Olivia Link
On Thursday, 24 April, CCSGA held its first meeting of Block 8 to go over recent initiatives and changes to the bylaws. The Council heard from Royce Hinojosa ‘26, Vice President of Outreach, on the results of their recent Uber Pilot Program.
The program, which spanned Blocks 5 and 6, allocated $24,000 to 100 randomly selected students who applied. The money covered up to $15 for 16 Uber rides. Of the 1600 vouchers provided, 824 were used, with most participants reporting they had more vouchers than needed.
Although only $11,150 of the allocated funds were spent, students rated the program 9.2 out of 10 in a study group and on a survey.
Common destinations included doctor’s appointments, grocery runs, Bonner fellowships, restaurants and job interviews, as well as recreational activities like exploring Old Colorado City or safely navigating around Denver at night. Participants in the focus group felt more included in on-campus conversations and reported an increased sense of food security.
“A lot of students on our campus feel isolated geographically,” Rakim Johnson ‘26 said. “I think that giving students the tools to get off campus themselves brings agency and gives people a sense of place.”
The goal of this pilot was to address concerns students have regarding the short distance and unreliability of Campus Safety’s SafeRide, and to gather data to present a potential program to the administration. Some academic departments, such as the Wellness Center, have already adopted CCSGA’s Uber infrastructure with a more limited scope. According to members of the CCSGA council, it is unlikely that they could fund the program for an extended period of time, especially if the size of incoming classes continues to decrease, as CCSGA’s funding comes from the student activity fee.
The second half of the meeting was geared toward proposed changes in the CCSGA committee bylaws. The Outreach Committee proposed a name change that would better reflect their role in community engagement work, which will be voted on next week. Two propositions to add verbiage about the committee’s interactions with local businesses and organizations passed unanimously, as did a measure requiring student feedback to be shared with Full Council at the end of the school year.
Internal Affairs Vice President Gina Jeong ‘25 brought up the possibility of combining executive and full council elections to increase voter engagement for CCSGA Council members. Currently, elections for executive positions occur in Block 6, which allows candidates who did not win to run for other council positions in Block 7. Jeong explained that merging the two would make voting easier for the student body, a potential solution to the low turnout of around 600 votes. However, this would prevent people who ran for executive positions and lost from running on the general ticket, an issue that would only exacerbate existing difficulties in filling council spots. Faculty sponsor Andrew Beck suggested allowing candidates to run for more than one position in order to address these concerns. The matter was tabled to be addressed at the next meeting.