A student senator is taking the initial steps in his campaign to use university funds to subsidize transportation costs for some of the 80 percent of New School students who live off-campus.

Patrick Gallen, who represents Lang in the University Student Senate, said he is already talking with his school’s dean, Stephanie Browner, as well as some administrators and student governments who have expressed interest in his campaign.

“Most students have class on campus four days a week. I think funding transportation from home to school and back is a feasible thing. I won’t budge on anything less,” Gallen said.

“One day I think it just kind of hit me when I think my card got declined for either food or buying a MetroCard,” said Gallen of the moment when he first had the idea for the program. “I’m not one of the students who can really call home and ask for help from mom and dad.”

“I’m doing this to make our university a more accessible place,” the senator added.

He has also begun collecting preliminary data through an online survey circulated by *The Antithesis*, an online student-run social justice magazine, he said.

Though Gallen’s campaign is only in its initial stages without any firm details, he hopes to create a program that provides discounts to students who need them based on their income and the distance they live from campus.

Along with administrators, Gallen said he is trying to build a student group that meets as often as once a week to help form a network of support for the transit subsidy initiative and push it forward in a transparent way.

“In this stage, it’s going to be a lot of meetings between me and anyone else who’d like to get on board with this,” Gallen said.

“I’d like anyone who wants to come to be able to come to these things,” he added. “I really don’t like the idea of a closed-door meeting. It’s not my style. I don’t feel like it’s the most effective way of getting the word out to students.”

He’s also researched similar programs in cities like Boston and Los Angeles that offer reduced transportation fares to college students, he said.

Gallen said that many New Schoolers have told him that they support his campaign and he hopes this will propel the future stages of the project.

“It feels good to know that people are all coming together around something,” he said.

“The New School lacks a sense of community around a single big issue because we are so fragmented, but I think this is something that people can kind of rally around,” the senator said. “Maybe in the future we’ll be actually rallying.”