Members of the Graduate Student Council (GSC) expressed concern about the future of the GO Pass program for off-campus graduate students in the last minutes of last night’s meeting.

The GO Pass program subsidizes train passes for graduate students who live off campus, providing unlimited use of Caltrain. In 2007, graduate students had to pay $99.50 for the pass, and approximately 3,500 students were eligible for the program.

The Office of the Provost agreed to fund the GO Pass for the 2007 calendar year, but according to Kristina Keating, a doctoral student in the School of Earth Sciences and co-chair of the GSC, no funding has been approved by the Provost’s Office for 2008 and beyond. The subsidized GO Pass will only be available until the end of this year.

The Provost’s Office agreed to fund the GO Pass for the 2007 calendar year provided that the Graduate Student Transportation Board propose a special fees measure for last spring’s ballot. The initiative did not pass in April’s elections.

“We are currently looking for financially sustainable solutions to make the GO Pass available for students in 2008 and beyond,” Keating said. “Costs of housing are increasing, so programs like this one are important to assist graduate students financially.”

Adam Sciambi, a graduate student who lives in San Francisco, expressed his concern about the costs he would incur next year if the GO Pass program were to end.

“I would be paying $150 dollars a month per pass,” he said, “which means my transportation costs would mount to $1,800 dollars a year.”

In 2005, when the GO Pass was first made available to graduate students, the program was entirely funded by the Provost’s Office, which continued to provide the majority of the funding in 2006, when the per-student cost was $60.

The GSC contributed $35,000 to the program in 2007, and the deans’ offices from each academic school together contributed a total of $30,000. And while the total cost of the GO Pass program is about $350,000, this total is likely to increase by six to 10 percent in 2008, according to the October report of the Graduate Student Transportation Board.

Keating said a committee composed of graduate students will be meeting next week with campus administrators to talk about the future of the GO Pass program.