Students and professors can get to class on time, save gasoline, and reduce production of greenhouse gasses in a new “SMCM Re-cycle Free Ride” bicycle program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Students and staff in the Free Ride Club are in their in the second week of throwing back the kickstands on the 25 reconditioned bikes deposited around campus in a ceremony at the end of September.
Dr. Maggie O’Brien, College president said, “It is just under a mile for me to drive from my office in Calvert Hall to a meeting on the north campus. It takes 20 minutes to walk there. Now I can ride a bike and save time and gas. Every little bit we do adds up and makes us better stewards of the environment.”
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Students are enthusiastic about the program and also see it as a way to get to class faster and also have some fun. Ranwa Hammamy, a senior, helped form the new club and hopes the bikes will save her time getting to class. Hammamy said that she doesn’t know how to ride a bike yet, but other members of the club have promised to teach her.
Meredith Epstein, a junior, was excited to come back to school this fall and find out the administration had already worked out the details for the bikes and they were on their way. “At other colleges, student groups have to petition for a program like this,” she said. Epstein is a member of the Student Environmental Action Coalition.
The bicycles will be left around campus unlocked so that anyone may use them. Colorful tall flags, called bike whips, identify the bikes. The bikes are also engraved for identification in case they are misplaced.
“We have 25 bikes to start with and will have some more ready soon,” said Robert Chaundy, purchasing agent for the College and member of the staff’s environmental stewardship team. “These bikes represent the reuse part of our ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ plans.” The goal is to have 200 bikes on campus.
“As an environmental sociologist, I see this as institutional adaptation to an environmental problem,” said the advisor for the club, Gary Williams, adjunct professor of sociology and outreach chairman for St. Mary’s Parish of Trinity Church. “The college is not only reducing consumption of fuel but is modeling for students, faculty, staff and the community at large. Grassroots approaches like this have a way of spreading quickly through the larger academic community and other institutions which have large campuses.”
Through a partnership with neighboring Trinity Church, the College is using bikes that were found abandoned on campus or donated to the church’s Christmas Bikes Program. The parish repairs bikes and gives them away to families at Christmas. The church had many adult-sized bikes or bikes too rusty for the Christmas program and made them available to the College. This year, students in the Free Ride Club will also work with church members on a regular basis to clean and repair bicycles, both for the College and for Christmas gifts.
To donate bikes to the program, contact Gary Williams at (240)725-0695 or by e-mail at williams@gmpexpress.net. Bikes should be in fair to good condition for refurbishing.
The bike program is part of St. Mary’s goal to evolve