This year, Trinity promoting Zipcar to students on campus to incentivize the company to keep its services on campus.

Zipcar is a car-sharing program that enables people to rent out a car, paying by the hour. At Trinity, there are two Zipcars on campus. There is an initial fee to become a member. Zipcar is giving $35 of driving credits for members of SGA and residential assistants.

David Tuttle, dean of students, feels that Zipcar offers a valuable service to students.

“When they first came onto campus, it was kind of me that they went through, and I thought this would be a good service for our students, especially out-of-state and international students and students without vehicles,” Tuttle said.

Tuttle has been in communication with Zipcar about car usage on campus. Zipcar will stay on campus as long as the company feels there is viable demand. Trinity does not pay for Zipcar to be on campus.

“I talked to the Zipcar recruiter last year and our usage of the cars on campus — we’re underperforming based on what we should do in order to maintain the program,” Tuttle said. “To me, probably the people that could be some of the influencers would be student government and RAs to use the service. And then be able to kind of promote and tell people about the service with no expectation that they do so. It might rub off on people and increase the visibility of the program.”

Adam Jue, junior and student worker in the Office of the Dean of Students, was tasked to ask Student Government Association president, Ty Tinker, if he would like to participate in a Zipcar promotional.

“I contacted Ty, the SGA administrator because as the administrator, he would have to email Zipcar and let them know he is interested in the promotion. I was tasked by Dean Tuttle to promote Zipcar to increase the usage rate of the app on campus,” Jue wrote in an email interview.

Tinker will reach out to the Zipcar representative that Jue connected him to and then SGA members will be able to take advantage of the promotion.

“This doesn’t happen all the time. SGA-wise, we don’t get paid or anything like that, so occasionally there’ll be benefits like luncheons and things that we’re going to go to. People like partnering with SGA because we’re kind of everywhere on campus, so it’s sort of promotional,” Tinker said.