Shuttles Should Be An Entrepreneurial Endeavor

To the editors:



The article “Scrapped Holiday Shuttles Stir Talks” (Dec. 15, news) discusses the Undergraduate Council’s decision to cease operating airport shuttles, and suggestions by some students that the UC should reenter this business. The UC quit shuttles (and other services, such as UC Boxes) for a good reason: The Council is very bad at providing them. The Council would be unwise to return to a former arena of its failure.

Running an airport shuttle service for hundreds of students is a complex, time-consuming and un-fun undertaking. Councilmembers, while generally conscientious, had little incentive to succeed at such a thankless task, especially outside of election season. As such, the UC’s airport shuttles had a tendency to leave students vexed, delayed, or even stranded.

Fortunately, through the miracle of money, our capitalist system can lead people to excel at things they don’t intrinsically enjoy. Organizing transportation so your peers can get to the airport is a service like any other in our economy, and it’s unclear why UC representatives should be expected to provide it on a volunteer basis. The recent rise of for-profit student businesses at Harvard—most notably Facebook, DormAid, and Unofficial Tours—demonstrates the ability of student entrepreneurs to meet service demands on campus. So, instead of asking the Council to try again, why not let some enterprising students take over this business, and receive financial rewards for doing so?

One potential roadblock to a for-profit shuttle service (or several such services, in competition with each other) is the University’s sometimes adversarial approach to student businesses, most notably Unofficial Tours. To succeed, shuttle businesses might need certain privileges that a group like DormAid does not, such as permission to load and unload buses on campus. Because airport shuttles are a highly useful and cost-saving service for students, the University should do what it can to foster entrepreneurial success in this area, even if this means waiving its usual guidelines on student businesses. This would be especially wise because another alternative—for the University to have its paid staff organize shuttles—would be a far more expensive way to achieve the same result.



JOSHUA A. BARRO ’05

Dec. 16, 2006

N.Y.



The writer is a former chairman of the Undergraduate Council Finance Committee.