MICHAEL MACLEOD

Graduate students can save hundreds of dollars a year by using their newly approved U-Pass instead of buying monthly bus passes from Saskatoon Transit.

Graduate students at the University of Saskatchewan voted Feb. 27 to implement a universal bus pass, or U-Pass, for a one-year trial period beginning in September 2013.

After the trial period students will vote on whether or not to keep the pass permanently.

The U-Pass is currently only available to undergraduate students at the U of S. It allows students unlimited transit travel in Saskatoon provided they are carrying their student card and have a validated U-Pass sticker on it.

About 66 per cent of the graduate students’ votes were in favour of the U-Pass, while 32 per cent voted against it and approximately 1.5 per cent abstained.

The new graduate pass will cost students $110.85 per term. This cost is not fixed and will likely increase annually with inflation.

At the moment, graduate students can buy a pass through the city for $78.00 per month.

Undergraduate students at the U of S pay $73.51 per term for the U-Pass.

The price difference between the graduate and undergraduate U-Passes is due to the number of students subscribing to the pass. With more than five times the number of graduate students on campus, undergraduates can bargain for a better rate than the graduates can.

The graduate student U-Pass will function exactly the same as the undergraduate equivalent, with unlimited fares around the city for the cardholder while the pass is active.

Payments for the U-Pass will be mandatory for all students unless they live outside city limits, live in on-campus residences, are enrolled only in distance education courses or are unable to ride the bus due to a disability.

Because the Graduate Students’ Association and University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union are viewed as two separate entities by the university, the GSA could not join the USSU plan and had to lobby for a separate deal with Saskatoon Transit.

This is not the first time a referendum for a graduate student U-Pass has been held. In 2007, 52 per cent of the voting graduate students elected not to have a U-Pass.

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Photo: Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf