Med School to fund shuttle after student complaints

The Medical School will fund a reinstitution of shuttle services to Center City for their students, officials announced yesterday.

Controversy arose when over 100 medical students complained that Penn Transit changes -- announced as a pilot program in July -- stranded them without a ride home.

Originally, pilot changes discontinued shuttle service to Center City. Currently, the Penn Bus route still ventures over the Schuylkill River, but does not offer individualized drop-off points.

"There's no choice, we have to have the service," Vice Dean for Medical Education Gail Morrison said. "Hopefully we may be able to get the University to recognize this is an important part that they should be paying for."

In the meantime, the Medical School will subsidize a seven-day-a-week shuttle service to Center City from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The new program began yesterday and will continue until winter break, according to Business Services spokeswoman Rhea Lewis.

"We'll monitor usage over the four-month period and present those figures to the Medical School administration," Lewis said.

So far, officials in the Medical School have not decided precisely where funding will come from, or how much funding will be necessary.

"We've got to do it, so we've got to find the money," Morrison said. "We didn't have it in the budget, but we always save a little money in the budget for things of unexpected nature."

Adding that "the idea is not to cut anything," Morrison said that medical officials felt they "didn't have a choice" except to pay for the program.

According to Morrison, there were "major problems of poor communication" in instituting the pilot changes.

"Most of the schools were not notified of the changes," she said.

The Medical School was compelled to support changes in the transit pilot program when more than 100 students came forward with complaints, according to fourth-year medical student Marc Cohen, the president of the Medical Student Government.

So far, student concerns have been alleviated with the return of shuttle services, according to Morrison.

"A relatively large group met last night to talk about this," she said, adding that the response was "terrific."

While other graduate students have also raised similar concerns to those of medical students, other changes have not been announced.

"We're planning to go ahead and set up meetings with those specific schools" that expressed concerns, Lewis said.

For Morrison, the need for expanded changes is very simple --"the school must have some kind of service available for students to get home safely."

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