"After studying abroad in Thailand last year, I realized I don't need to be one person driving in a car," said Brittany St. John '08, Saint Michael's graduate from Lake Placid, N.Y., who this semester is finishing her Saint Michael's student teaching certification at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington. St. John said she decided to change her life style, and now rides a bike from Saint Michael's in Colchester to her teaching assignment. Sometimes she puts her bike on the CCTA city bus and thereby both bikes and busses to the school.
Derek Souza, a senior, religious studies major from Ringoes, N.J., and Dan Hock, a senior political science major from Northfield, Vt., engineered the Yellow Bike Program this semester on the Saint Michael's College campus, and enlisted St. John's support. The threesome have put 25 bikes into rental use on campus, with special focus on getting students to bike instead of driving between the main campus on Route 15 and the Fort Ethan Allen campus, a little more than a mile up the road. Bikers can also take the Yellow Bikes into Burlington.
"I haven't driven my car in a month," Souza said. "I haven't owned a car in three years," said Hock. "I'm committed to biking or taking the bus," he added. "I've only driven about three times in seven months." Hock switched from being a serious bicycle racer, to being committed to making biking important to the environmental movement.
All 25 bikes, with their top tube sprayed yellow, were rented out on Friday, Oct. 10, with another five bikes being readied for rental. Students pay $10 to join the program, with $5 going for bike maintenance and $5 being returned to the renter at year's end "if bikes are treated nicely." Students are then members and are given a gold bike chain link which must be presented every time a bike is taken out for a two-day time period. They may take bikes out repeatedly throughout the year. Helmets and locks are also given out with the bikes.
4 bike hubs
Rental bikes are made available, picked up and returned, at four campus locations or hubs—the Durick Library, the Ross Sports Center, Alliot Student Center and the Office of Sustainability Coordinator Heather Ellis on the North Campus. Ellis is supporting the project, and has assigned her two student workers to join Souza and Hock in keeping the project going.
"If you don't have a bike and don't want to buy one, this is the ultimate way to get around without having to drive your car," said the Yellow Bike Program fact sheet.
Hock works at Old Spokes Home, a bike shop in Burlington, where he repairs all the Yellow Bikes for the project. They were all donated to the project by Saint Michael's from bikes abandoned at the end of the school year. Old Spokes Home has given the project a deal on the repair work and on bike locks. Lou DiMasi, director of residence life, has supported the project, helping them buy yellow paint and bike locks.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.