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INGA KESELMAN

Will fare finally be fair to the environment and its riders?

August 6, 2019 by INGA KESELMAN Leave a Comment

Metrocards are trash. Literally. 

Between refilling and losing cards, a lot of customers can agree that the 27-year old transit fare system should be updated to prioritize New Yorkers’ convenience.

Patrick Foye, the CEO of the MTA, has decided to transition to OMNY by 2023. OMNY – One Metro New York – is a contactless card fare payment system, according to its website, omny.info. 

This new fare payment system claims to be more efficient because of its flexibility. No additional card is required with OMNY making the system more environmentally friendly. New Yorkers can use a contactless credit or debit cards available at most of New York’s major banks–Chase, HSBC, Santander, and Capital One–or they can opt for using Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, or Google Pay, or they can use the MTA OMNY app which will launch later this year.

When New Yorkers in Madison Square Park were asked how they felt about the MTA’s plans to update the fare system, responses were initially mixed.

“I like the Metrocard,” said Anne, who recently moved to the city. 

Andrew Introna, a college freshman and New York native, agreed, claiming he liked the convenience of the unlimited card. 

Anne and Andrew had a change of heart when they found out that the plastic used to make metrocards cannot be recycled. The MTA has tried combatting this by adding a $1 charge to newly purchased Metrocards to encourage riders to refill their existing cards. This had little success as Metrocards continue to scatter the floors of subway stations and transit centers.

Apart from the environmental aspect, Metrocards are also a huge waste of money. In 2011, WNYC reported that lost and unused Metrocards across the city add up to $52 million yearly. This is wasted money coming straight out of commuters’ pockets.  

OMNY claims it will improve the efficiency of the MTA, changing the daily commutes of millions of New Yorkers. 

One New Yorker, Victor, was concerned that people without existing credit and debit cards would not be able to use the city’s metro. To address this, OMNY will release its own card by 2021, which will work like a Metrocard. It is still unknown as to whether this OMNY card will be recyclable. 

AM New York reports the new fare system could also make fare more equitable. The MTA has faced backlash because not all New Yorkers can afford the monthly savings pass, despite the fact that New Yorkers of all socioeconomic backgrounds use transit daily. 

David Jones, an MTA board member, told AM New York, “With the [new] technology, if you in fact swipe through enough times in a month you could automatically be given the 30-day benefit,” which would create a more equitable fare system. 

Some New Yorkers were concerned about OMNY’s potential for security risks.“I prefer using a Metrocard because I’m used to it and I feel like using a credit or debit card can be more of a security risk,” said Julia Finnegan, who uses a Metrocard for her daily commute to school. 

Mastercard, which is one of the first companies to release a contactless card, is addressing these concerns by assuring users that the only thing transmitted on a contactless payment is a one-time code from the card to the reader that identifies the transaction. This makes fraud possible, but highly unlikely.

Systems like these have been implemented in cities all over the world. London updated its Oyster fare system in 2019 to ease the commute. Mastercard found that in London the cost to collect fares was reduced by 6% and that it took an average of 500 milliseconds to walk through the turnstile and onto the train platform. 

OMNY is still in its trial phase, but hopefully the MTA will work to smooth out some of the inconveniences the system has been causing in its early launch. Just last week, I tried the system on a Staten Island bound express bus. I tapped my card and found a seat. All was well until I opened my bank account to find that I had been charged $6.75 – the cost of fare – and an additional charge of $2.75 from the MTA. I was confused as to what this second charge was, so I called my bank.They refunded the money and are currently running an investigation to figure out what happened. This seemingly hassle free system ended up wasting more time and energy then it claimed to save. 

I have used OMNY everyday since last week’s incident and have not run into any more issues. 

OMNY is currently available on Staten Island buses and stops on the 4, 5, and 6 lines between Grand Central-42 St and Atlantic Ave -Barclays Center. By late 2020, OMNY will be available across the entire city, adding the Long Island Railroad and Metro North early in 2021. 

Filed Under: Featured

Killing Creativity

August 5, 2019 by INGA KESELMAN Leave a Comment

“He who marches out of step hears his own drum.” 

-Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey and his merry band of Pranksters boarded a bus called Further in 1964 to spread their message of nonconformity, preaching individuality and creativity. Drugs ruined this message, so it was not able to break through to mainstream society. That does not mean that what Kesey was saying was bad, it just got lost in translation. 

It is our job to finish what Kesey started and make sure this message breaks through. We need to save individuality to progress as a society. Schools are partly responsible for the conformist society we live in today.

Conformity can be as mundane as lining up for lunch, sitting in rows, and being told when to talk and when to stay quiet or it can be as grand as grading every student on the same rubric. 

A rubric’s main job is to assess students and their work by giving a clear set of criteria for them to follow. This sounds good in theory, but nowadays, schools have rubrics for everything: group work, peer discussion, Socratic seminars, papers, essays, projects, and participation. Thus, rubrics in all of their glorious uses are partly responsible for society holding blind conformity as gospel by grading every aspect of life inside the classroom and only rewarding perfection or anything close to it. That’s not to say that we should just throw away every rubric. It is important to set some standards but schools have taken it too far.

Firstly, rubrics raise the issue of whether or not kids sitting in AP and honors classes are actually smart or if they are good at memorizing criteria. There is a difference between students who can memorize standards and students who are smart and creative. Innovation cannot be measured with a checklist, so it is rarely rewarded in our school system. To do well in school, you have to conform.

Secondly, these rubrics are extended to teacher performance so much so that lecture classes are frowned upon. I understand the school’s desire for us as a student body to collaborate, but this does not allow teachers to do their jobs: teach. According to etale.org, “[Rubrics] risk turning the role of the teacher into that of a grader, leaving less room for the teacher to be an authentic ‘reader’ of student work.” This is perpetuating a reward system that values teamwork and meeting requirements more than understanding the content and deep thought, thus creating busy work that does not allow students to form their own opinions.  

Furthermore, rubrics teach students the value of perfection which is unrealistic in the real world. Matt Suarez from Penn State commented on this saying that a student who gets two questions wrong on a 10 question quiz would receive a C; which for a lot of students is not ideal. “Nobody is perfect, so to expect that from people who are going through potentially the most stressful times of their lives is not the best way to go,” Suarez says. Rubrics put young people on a scale that punishes imperfection which is ridiculous. 

Finally, rubrics discourage creativity. According to Conformity and Learning from BBN Times, “Conformity – by its very nature – relies on reapplying solutions from the past, but with more careful control and greater intensity. What we really need is the unleashing of the creative genius that makes us human. Not the direction we have been taking as we have succeeded in quashing it, almost to extinction.” Society can not move towards innovation without creativity. Rubrics are flawed because they look for a cookie cutter work and that’s what they reward.

It does not make sense for schools to accustom young minds to follow a checklist. That is not say that structure is bad, it is to say that you can not find innovation in the walls of a rubric. Grading students this way sets them up to be followers, not leaders or innovators. 

Not everyone will be the next big tech genius or artist but everyone should have the opportunity to step out of march to hear how their drum beats.

Do you hear your own drum?

Filed Under: Commentary, Uncategorized

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