Campus Cab to Raise Funds for MIS Trip

DAE, the student org serving alumni, is running a campus cab service to raise money and awareness for their spring break MIS trip to Eleuthera, a small island in the Bahamas.

The MIS team will stay with a missionary couple who graduated from Cedarville. They will help set up a three-day Bible camp and share the gospel with middle and high school students. They will also help with a school fair and will complete a small building project.

Zach Luce, a junior youth ministry major, developed the idea of using an enclosed golf cart as a cab to raise money and awareness for the trip.

Charity Norman, one of the leaders on the trip and a staff member in the alumni office, said DAE wanted to raise money in different ways.

“From the get-go we wanted to come up with ideas where we could think outside the box of just letter writing and start being creative with fundraising,” Norman said. “This is one of the ideas that came from that.”

The campus cab runs every Monday and Friday from 9:30 a.m. until noon and is open for anyone who needs a ride. The cab will run through Feb. 24. The cost is $1, which can be paid either through cash or by credit card. All of the proceeds go straight to the mission trip.

The enclosed golf cart seats up to six passengers. Drivers take passengers anywhere on campus, including Alford, Carnegie and South Hall.

During the hours of operation, the cab mostly drives around campus looking for students needing a ride, but students can also tweet their location to the drivers at @Campus_Cab.

Norman said they wanted to start running the cab with limited hours and increase it if necessary.

“We really wanted a time that all students are pretty much walking around, and all students are walking around before and then during the lunch time,” she said.

Mike Stouffer, a freshman pharmacy major, said, “I think that the idea of having a cab drive around campus picking students up is just genius. As someone who has to make the long, cold trek from the ENS to chapel, I find that paying $1 is definitely worth getting me out of the cold.”

After being dropped off at the DMC, Stouffer said riding in the cab instead of walking made a big difference that morning because the temperature was just above zero..

The cab is one of the creative ways DAE plans to raise money for the spring break trip to Eleuthera. Students looking to raise support are shoveling snow or selling T-shirts at alumni events.

Norman said that it’s possible that the cab will continue after the money has been raised, but they would do it for a specific fundraising purpose.

“We’ve talked about doing it during homecoming where all the money would go towards the alumni scholarship fund or something along those lines,” she said. “But as far as turning it into a regular taxi service, it’s probably not going to happen.”

Dan Case is a sophomore psychology major and reporter for Cedars. He is passionate about writing and loves having the opportunity to expand on that hobby through Cedars.