By Katie Oglesby, Editor-in-Chief
Student Senate announced over the summer that the College Life Advisory Committee had successfully created a campus bike sharing program.
This project was headed by Drew Lemon ‘24 and Aidan Wisniewski-Campo ‘24, the spring co-chairs of the College Life Advisory Committee.
Lemon said the program would allow students to check out a bike to ride around campus and other locations immediately surrounding the campus.
Senate plans to have bike share racks around campus that students can check out bikes for free from a mobile app. They will be given the choice to check it out for one to eight hours, and then will return the bike to the rack after use, Lemon said.
According to Lemon, Senate appropriated approximately $13,000 for the bike share project.
“Aidan and I simply saw this project as a great way to build more assets to Gettysburg that would greatly improve our campus and our community,” Lemon said.
Lemon said the committee has been working on this program throughout the last academic year. “After gauging a positive interest with students and seeing many similar programs already implemented at peer institutions, we finally thought there would be no better time to join the bike movement!” he said.
“This was one of those projects that everyone cared so deeply about,” he said. “Everyone’s passion and dedication to make the bike share a reality came to fruition to make the program a total success, and that was truly remarkable to see. I think I can speak for all of our committee when I say this project is something that we believe is very important, and we are beyond excited to see the project [as] reality.”
Lemon said Jon Allen, the Director of the Office of Student Activities and Greek Life (OSAGL) and Jim Biesecker, Associate Vice President of Facilities Planning and Management, worked with the committee to make the bike share project happen.
Allen said the bikes are already on campus and that they are just waiting for access to the app and management system to install them. He said the program should be ready for use by the time classes start in August.
“…This program is a stepping stone for a long term bike share program that we plan to grow in the near future. We started with a smaller purchase of bikes for this coming fall semester to see how the program plays out in its entirety and its popularity,” Lemon said. “Aidan and I have ambitions to make the bike share grow larger as popularity increases and the program further solidifies on campus.”
