In the Spring Semester of 2014, Senior Dan Couchenhour began his senior final project on educating Catawba students about their water consumption. He did this by posting facts about water usage in the dorms and several buildings around campus. To ensure that students would try to start cutting back on their water usage, he gave them an incentive. This incentive was that if students cut back on their water usage, each gallon that was saved equated to money saved for the college. That saved money would then go towards new bicycles for the campus that could be checked out for student’s use at any time.

With the help of a donor that agreed to match each gallon’s saved money dollar for dollar, Catawba raised over $4,400 dollars in one semester. Last semester, fall 2014, the bikes, helmets, and other bicycle gear was purchased from the Skinny Wheels bike shop in downtown Salisbury. There are 12 regular bicycles and one tandem bicycle. The tandem bike was donated as a gift from last year’s (2014) Senior Class SGA.

So why were bicycles chosen? Well, along with the water conservation pamphlets, an e-mail was sent out to all students with a poll for what the student body wanted to do with the money saved through their conservation efforts. This poll included 5 options and a write in suggestions box. The bike-share program won this e-mailed poll and was thus put into works.

Students will be able to rent bicycle out for a day, or over the weekend, from the Student Affairs office sometime this semester.