In response to University Police’s (UPD) use of UB Stampede buses to transport 15 arrested pro-Palestine protesters last week, SA senators passed a resolution Wednesday evening calling on UB and UPD to discontinue the use of student-funded transportation for arrests.
The resolution, introduced by SA Special Interest Council Coordinator Aidan Sumrall, passed with nine senators voting in favor and three members — including SA President Becky Paul-Odionhin and Senate Chairperson Gavin Krauciunas — abstaining. No senators voted against the resolution.
UB undergraduate full-time students each pay $484.50 per academic year for UB’s Transportation Fee. Fee revenue from UB’s 20,761 undergraduate students contributes approximately $10 million to UB Parking & Transportation Services.
“The undergrads are upset. You know, they don’t want the buses they’re riding on in their day-to-day — [to] have something to be used against them,” Senator Kayla Yan said. “I think that anyone in any protest — in something escalated to that level — no one wants that to happen.”
Paul-Odionhin said she was concerned that the alternative, such as “putting students in a cop car,” would be more harmful than beneficial.
“I don’t know, one seems a lot more criminalizing than the other,” Paul-Odionhin said. “Even UPD, for the most part, are funded by student fees, and even the cop car would be funded by student fees. So there’s a lot that goes into it where I don’t know if there’s an alternative, and I don’t know what that would be.”
She also said she would prefer that the resolution chart a more concrete course of action for the SA.
Before their vote on the Stampede resolution, senators passed a resolution sponsored by Yan that calls for UB to “overhaul its survey distribution methods” for broad-based fee consultations. Yan told senators she hopes to improve student participation in the process, since only 71 students took this year’s survey.
Mylien Lai is the senior arts editor and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com
Mylien Lai is an assistant arts editor at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @my_my_my_myliennnn on Instagram.
Photo: Breadchastick / Wikimedia Commons
