Bicycle service aims to help international students

When international students first arrive at USD, they face a considerable amount of stress, both emotionally and financially.

Patrick Morrison, the International Club adviser for the Center for Academic and Global Engagement, said considering all of the other things international students have to pay for, transportation can often be overlooked.

“For them, when they first get here, there’s a lot of start up expenses – books, tuition, fees, furniture – and that $150, $200 to get a bike might not be on the radar right away,” he said.

And yet, Morrison said that life in a new setting can be even more stressful without any way to get around.

“If you don’t have a car, which the majority of (international students) don’t, getting to Walmart or going downtown can be a trek, especially in less-than-ideal weather,” he said.

This situation was experienced firsthand by Nepalese graduate student Prakriti Rajbhandari, president of USD’s International Club.

“As an international student, I remember that I struggled a lot moving around in Vermillion, I could not afford a car,” Rajbhandari said. “You can ask your friends, ‘Can you take me to Walmart today?’ but it’s impossible to keep on asking them.”

Eventually, Rajbhandari was able to borrow a bicycle from a friend, and her transportation problems became more manageable.

This got Rajbhandari thinking – would access to a bicycle help other international students?

“I thought that it would be nice if we could do something to help these international students to have this easy transition, if we could give them bikes,” she said.

So Rajbhandari is teaming up with Vermillion’s Recycle 605 group, which has roughly 100 secondhand bicycles in its possession, to try to develop a program in which international students can borrow a bicycle when they need one.

“We thought that we should maybe start with 10 in the beginning” and see from there whether the program is widely used or popular, Rajbhandari said.
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The need for temporary bicycle transportation is especially strong among USD’s small group of exchange students, who are only here for one semester, Morrison said.

The program is tentatively being called iCycle, which Rajbhandari thought of as a combination of “international” and “cycle.”

Though the details are’t fully worked out yet, the program will likely involve a system in which a student ID swipe is required to borrow a bicycle for a yet-to-be determined amount of time, free of charge.

Morrison said a program of this sort would be “something we could start up relatively easily,” and added that he knows of a similar bicycle borrowing program in Minneapolis.

Recycle 605’s Jessi Wilharm and Kevin Brady are on board with the idea, and the International Club is considering having the pair do a bike safety presentation for international students in the fall.

“We thought that it would be nice if they could come and talk about bike safety to the students because they’re all international,” Rajbhandari said. “We don’t have a dedicated lane for bikes.”

The group is also planning to host a bike tour of Vermillion for incoming international students.

Where the bikes will be stored for the program isn’t definite yet, and Rajbhandari said she hopes Recycle 605 will help occasionally with the maintenance of the bikes if the need arises.

For international students who hope to own rather than borrow a bike, Morrison said they’ll be directed to Recycle 605, where he said a donation of $20 can get a student a bicycle.

And if students decide at some point that they no longer need the bicycle, Morrison said they could return it to Recycle 605.

Rajbhandari said having a bicycle could make a significant positive difference in the college experience of an international student, especially early on.

“Just to have a bike and go around town if you’re alone kind of helps you because you get kind of homesick when you’re first here,” she said. “You don’t know the place, you don’t know campus, you don’t know people.”

Morrison said CAGE will “hopefully do a lot of the legwork over the summer,” when they’ll have more time for the project. Eventually, if the program becomes successful and needs more support, he said they may reach out to SGA or USD administration for additional help.