Stetson Offers Borrow-a-Bike Program

With fuel costs on the rise, many colleges and universities are encouraging students to use mass transit or--even better for their health and the environment--ride a bike to school. For example, this fall, Ripon College (Wis.) will offer freshmen free mountain bikes, funded by private donations. The package includes helmets and locks in exchange for a promise not to bring a car to campus.
But if $300-per-student mountain bikes don't fit your budget plans, Stetson University (Fla.) has another idea. The school recently introduced a program called “Green Bikes,” which is a campus community bike program that allows students to use designated bicycles for one-week periods at no cost.
Here’s how it works: Students borrow bicycles much the way they borrow books from a library. The SGA office functions as the checkout desk. A student who checks out a bike will receive a key to a specific bicycle and will have unlimited use of the bike for one week. The bike then must be returned, but can be checked out again by the same person. The campus bike program relies on donated bicycles that often are in various state of disrepair when received. Each bike is repaired, painted, labeled and registered with both Stetson University and the DeLand Police Department before being made available for loan.
Green Bikes also includes an educational component to raise awareness about environmentalism and safe biking. Long-term goals include packaging the program as a model for other universities and also branching out into a Community Bike program for the greater DeLand area.
The program was developed last year by the Student Government Association (SGA), Stetson’s Bonner Scholars Program, and the Department of American Studies. SGA wrote a bill to promote environmentalism on campus and included a list of ideas including a bike program. The project grew into a collaborative effort, and Paul Croce, professor of American Studies and a member of Stetson’s Environmental Responsibility Council, assisted in getting the program off the ground. Now, the program is fully operated by SGA.