Mitchell Osterlund, Reporter
Camila Moreno, Editor
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| ANDREA HILL | CAMPUS CARRIER |
Berry houses over two thousand students on campus, many of whom are without a car. This makes it tricky to navigate around campus, find places to shop in Rome or go out for dinner.
This problem led to the formation of the Berry College Rides Facebook page. With nearly 200 members, the page helps with carpooling to the airport or just taking people to town.
“I didn’t have a car last year, so I created this page to help myself and others around campus find rides,” Isabelle Ryerson, founder of the Berry College Rides page, said. “This page has done a good job of helping other students so I’m excited to see it keep growing.”
Berry College does not offer students any organized form of transportation off campus. Dean of students Debbie Heida said that 80 percent of students have a car, so most of the time it isn’t an issue for others to find a ride. In a past initiative, Berry provided students with a bus to Wal-Mart once a month, but the plan was unsuccessful.
“Because of the varying schedules of students, no one came, so we shut down the system,” Heida said.
A decision was made several years ago to pull the Rome City bus stop from Berry’s campus. According to Kathy Shealy, the director of Rome City transit, there used to be a bus stop where the Cage Center is now. Shealy also mentioned that students can still get buses to Berry, all they have to do is call the city bus station and the bus will pick them up at the Welcome Center. However, the official bus stop may very well find its way back to Berry.
“There are currently serious discussions going on about bringing the bus stop back into Berry’s campus,” Shealy said. “The stop at Berry fits in perfectly on our route to the Mt. Berry Mall.”
Many students without cars purchase bikes instead.
“I got my bike around two months ago because I was tired of walking everywhere,” freshman Cade Green said. “Riding a bike has really cut my travel time between class in half.”
Although Berry does not have an organized off-campus transportation system, there are several transportation options for students on campus. Berry offers an on-campus bus transportation system to help carless students get to class faster, and also offers bikes to international students to help them with transportation.