Soooo, I had the idea that a great way to encourage and support on-campus cycling/commuting would be to build some sort of shelter around the racks to keep out the elements.  

Here are some examples I found.  
I thought this might be an ambitious but worthy science club endeavor....

http://www.action-storage.co.uk/lockers/cyclerack.asp
http://www.drexel.edu/univrel/digest/archive/071607/bike_rack2.jpg
http://lewiselementary.org/files/200710171033-1.jpg

What do you all think about this idea?

--Jenny

I brought up the bike rack shelters a few months ago at the first budget meeting I attended.  I then brought it up again at the final senate meeting of the semester.  I'm not sure if it was generating any interest or excitement.  I think that the money should come out of the student life budget (the one that has $70,000 and is for long term improvements to the school), not a science club budget.  The links are great!  Good research!!  :-)

I recall it generating more interest with the science club members.  Do you know how one goes about getting that "other" money?  Personally, I don't think it matters where it comes from unless it will prevent other projects from happening.  But I do agree that it would be more appropriate for it to come from that fund and not ours.

I have a customer of mine that makes bike racks.  His manufacturing facility is off Minnehaha and franklin we could look into getting some bids on a personalized MCTC shelter vs. the ones you found Jenny and present these to the budget committee for possible student senate action.  Another way to influence people to drive less is double the parking fee and give all the extra money to science club for "research" purposes.

Wow!  We'd have a huge budget.  We could buy an exploradome!

Ya ill second a proposal to buy our own exploradome.

I like the idea, but we should organize a Bike Club to do stuff like this. If that ain't gonna happen, let's at least get 3LF to help...

-Benj.

I know peter is up for a bike club and I know a couple other people who may be interested.  You know ben you would get stuck doing everything for the club.

Can we get some numbers, bryan, from your customer and then add this and/or include it in our budget proposal and/or figure out how to request the money from the greater "for all of mctc students" fund that Tanya mentioned at the meeting last friday?
I'd like to do this project, although it's not hands-on, it might still be worthwhile.  I'm not sure that it's in our mission at all actually.  Nevertheless maybe I could create a sub-science club committee to work on it with non-science club funds?  That seems appropriate to me....whata y'all think?

Regarding the proposal to get the funds that we were specifying...the proposal just has to directed to the reserve fund.  The proposal part is the same, we would just specify that we want the funds to come out of the reserve fund.