UGS shares updates on DisGo as Stanford Transportation waits for a new director

The Undergraduate Senate (UGS) Affordability and Accessibility Committee is waiting for a new executive director from Stanford Transportation to fill Bryan Shaw’s outgoing position before they can take the next steps to improve the Disability Golf (DisGo) Cart Service, they said senators at Wednesday’s meeting. .

Class coordinators from the Disability Community (DisCo) space had been collecting data this past summer on specific improvements that could be made to the DisGo service, including making the service more accessible to members of the Stanford community with disabilities and medical conditions, and facilitating travel between core campus locations.

Last Wednesday, UGS Co-Chair Gordon Allen ’26 and Lizbeth Hernandez Rios ’25, chair of the Affordability and Accessibility Committee, met with them and the DisCo advocacy group to discuss how UGS could help them improve their efforts to improve DisGo facilitate.

Hernandez Rios said that as DisCo continues discussions with Vice Provost of Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen, UGS will continue to “advocate for student voices.”

The Senate also addressed their ongoing initiative to continue supporting the Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) shuttle service, which facilitates student travel to and from nearby airports. Hernandez Rios, Allen, Celeste Vargas ’27, and UGS co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 recently met with Rasmussen to discuss possible improvements to this service. Hernandez Rios said they needed to work more closely with Stanford Transportation to better present the needs of the student population to them.

Yoanna Hoskins ’27 and Viviana Chuquijajas ’26 also provided an update on their initiative to partner with Green Library to expand the First-Generation and/or Low-Income (FLI) library. The FLI library is a library lending system for used textbooks. Hoskins and Chuquijajas want to increase access and affordability of textbooks for FLI students with funding from Green Library. They use last year’s data from Diego Kagurabadza ’25, the Associated Students of Stanford University president, to see what the most important books are for the student population.

The Senate is in the process of drafting a joint resolution to support undocumented students and another joint resolution to establish a student staff at the Bechtel International Center to resolve issues faced by international students regarding financial staff. During their meeting on Wednesday, they also approved funding for voluntary student organizations (VSOs).