USG arranges SCÜP LAX shuttle for service before Thanksgiving Break
President Hannah Woodworth provided a monthly update at Tuesday’s Undergraduate Student Government Senate meeting.
Woodworth shared updates about last month’s launch of SCÜP, the USC-Los Angeles International Airport shuttle. Of the 1,430 available tickets offered for Fall Break, 1,250 were claimed. Of these reservations, SCÜP approximates that nearly 900 students took advantage of the service. SCÜP hopes to capture 25% of total demand by the end of the year — approximately 9,000 students. To meet their goal, the service will need to increase ridership by upwards of 30% during Thanksgiving Break. Six hundred students have already signed up for shuttle transportation in anticipation of the break.
“It’s getting a little bit challenging since the days people are leaving is spread over a longer period of time,” Woodworth said. “Students are leaving Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday or even missing the whole week, so it’s not as much of an isolated concentrated time but I believe we’re only running the shuttle next Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Since her last update, Woodworth has met with eight more student leaders to conduct qualitative interviews about how to best connect student organizations with USG resources. Woodworth plans to conduct four to nine more interviews before the next administration to include in her report.
“This is to get a better gauge of students,” Woodworth said. “We want to see how can we improve and better identify systemic qualities because we ran our platform a year ago.”
Woodworth presented other project updates, including celebrating Labor Appreciation Day in support of service workers on campus, USG election reform and hosting workshops with the Gould School of Law to help students learn about their rights. She also discussed administrative roundtables USG will lead starting Thursday about how to secure off-campus housing. Woodworth also called to create a private fund for undocumented students who are ineligible for paid university jobs per federal guidelines.
Woodworth also announced goals for the Spring 2023 semester to improve USG’s crisis communication groups by creating a communication guide to better direct where and how to respond to internal and external crises. USG plans to establish permanent transition guides for incoming USG officers and host discourse workshops to combat increased tensions on campus.
“We had heightened issues this past year from roommate conflicts,” Woodworth said. “More [students] are willing to bring the issue up with Residential Assistants or upper-level administrators versus just talking it out with their roommate, even for low-level issues. So we want to encourage students to talk to each other more and hopefully be able to work these issues out on their own.”
Senator Sam Nadol provided project updates, including on the USCard integration with Apple Wallet.
“We’ve had a lot of really exciting conversations on that,” Nadol said. “I’ve met with services on this team, as well as Apple and we’re really excited about getting this going.”
Nadol also spoke about updates on providing reusable to-go containers for dining halls, putting recycling bins on the Row and helping increase sign-ups for SCÜP over Thanksgiving Break.
Chair of accessibility Juliana Melendez shared that the Accessibility Committee’s mission is to remove accessibility barriers for all USC students. The committee has also been working to draw in registered student organizations’ participation and support.
Melendez shared three additional project updates, including making class recordings of lectures available for all students and streamlining the process across the University. Their next step is to collect anonymous student testimonials on the experience of virtual learning. Other projects include Accessibility 101, a project to increase the student body’s understanding of accessibility, how to be an ally through social media and creating a consolidated reporting form to streamline the process and increase transparency.