University of Maryland students will no longer vote on whether they support implementing a mandatory student fee to offer unlimited Metrorail and Metrobus rides during April’s SGA election, after president Reese Artero vetoed the measure this week.
Artero’s veto comes one week after the Student Government Association voted overwhelmingly to approve the campuswide referendum 23-2. The proposed mandatory student fee would be “unsustainable, unfeasible and fiscally irresponsible,” the senior criminology and criminal justice major said during the SGA’s general body meeting on Wednesday.
The non-binding referendum would have asked students whether they supported a new fee for full-time students — estimated to cost between $300 and $400 — to fund the U-Pass program, which would grant unlimited Metrobus and Metrorail rides to full-time students during the fall and spring semesters, according to the act.
“While unlimited Metro access may be beneficial for some, the financial burden and logistical constraints make this program unfeasible for [this university’s] diverse student body,” Artero wrote in her veto.
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Last semester, some students at this university criticized the lack of a Metro discount program, The Diamondback previously reported.
But many students do not regularly use the Metro, or have access to alternative transportation methods, Artero added. This, in addition to the lack of an opt-out option, would make the fee an “unnecessary burden” for students, she said.
“Part-time students — who may need Metro access the most as they take on jobs and internships — would not be eligible, and the program does not cover summer or winter sessions, further limiting its usefulness,” Artero wrote.
Multiple schools in the Washington, D.C., area, including George Washington University and American University, already participate in the U-Pass program, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s website.
The referendum’s results would have guided whether the SGA would discuss this issue with university administration and the Department of Transportation Services, Syed Azan Ali, an off-campus neighboring representative and the bill’s sponsor, told The Diamondback on March 5.
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“DOTS has provided all the appropriate data and does not have further comment on the action under consideration,” this university wrote in a statement to The Diamondback on March 5.
Ali, a senior government and politics and Persian studies major, said at the meeting that the referendum should go through so that students can at least show whether or not they support a similar program being implemented.
Leonard Fomin, the SGA’s speaker pro tempore, said that there needs to be further discussion with DOTS and WMATA before implementing similar programs in the future.
“The most important thing to consider is feasibility of this program,” the sophomore government and politics major said during the meeting. “[The] overall impact on existing student fees would be disproportionate to the potential benefit.”
