Rainy Days

Key Takeaways: 

• Benefits

  • Students don’t have to stress over not having an umbrella to use after school.

  • The umbrellas will quickly become a return investment and generate profits.

• Implementation

  • Purchase umbrellas at wholesale prices.

  • Create a logging system to keep track of who rents umbrellas.

• Challenges

  • Remote education means we cannot begin implementing this policy until school becomes fairly normal again. 

  • Getting volunteers on such short notices.

• Solutions

  • The first half of the year during remote education will be spent planning for the policy.

  • Distributors will be set on rotation as well as reminded beforehand.

Background

          Project Rainy Days is an initiative that details the renting of umbrellas to students who have forgotten or do not have their umbrellas on rainy days. Stuyvesant students face several different stresses already, and we believe that getting rained on should not be another weight on the already heavy burden that we face. Through Project Rainy Days, our caucus plans to allow sophomores to rent umbrellas from the Sophomore Caucus. It is important to note that Project Rainy Days will only apply for rainy days after school and not lunches or frees. 

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Research

          Project Rainy Days is an idea that has been proposed in the past but has never been implemented before. We’ve done the research and have a plan as to how we are going to implement this project. Umbrellas would be bought in bulk to keep prices low. Three umbrella wholesalers we’ve been looking into are, “All Time Trading,” “UmbrellaBazaar,” and “4Imprint”. The prices of these umbrellas range from $2.00 to $5.00. 

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Benefits

          There is one main benefit to the implementation of this project: students will no longer have to worry about not having an umbrella to use. Every person has, at one point in their lives, forgotten or lost their umbrella. We can all empathize with the feeling of looking out and seeing the pouring rain and looking back at your empty, umbrella-less locker. But our campaign wants to minimize the number of students that have to go through this experience every day.

          Another benefit would be the extra source of income that the renting of the umbrellas would bring in, not just for the Student Union, but Stuyvesant as a whole. The cost of the umbrella will be covered by the money we make renting them fairly quickly. (In an optimal scenario, four days) This money will then be returned to the student body through the funding of new caucus projects or buying more umbrellas. 

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Implementation

          To implement Project Rainy Days, one of the first steps we will take is to buy the umbrellas, starting off with 50-100 umbrellas. Then, we would use a scanner to keep a log of the students who checked out an umbrella. This recording would include their OSIS, (because that’s what we would be scanning,) their name, as well as proof of payment (we plan to use Square, as it accepts cash and card). Once the students use the umbrella, they would have to bring the umbrella back the following day. If it does rain again the next day, the students may keep the umbrella and pay for it the following day with a fee of a dollar for every day the umbrella is not returned. If the umbrellas are not returned in five days time, we will email them and alert them about the missing umbrella. After three more days, if they still have not returned the umbrella, we plan on turning them over to the administration and their fines will be logged on their student profile, similar to how temporary ID fines work. The umbrellas will be distributed in a location close to the entrance from 3:40 to 3:55. The distribution of these umbrellas will be handled by members of the caucus. We aim to start this project with the Sophomore class, and once it becomes successful enough, we want to help spread it to the rest of the school. Furthermore, especially during these times and even after, it is important that we keep a standard of cleanliness. This can be easily achieved simply by investing in sanitizing wipes to clean the handle of each umbrella.

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Challenges

          There are many clear challenges to the implementation of this project. The biggest problem that we face is the fact that this project cannot be done during the first half of the school year due to the pandemic and the health implications that come along with it. Therefore, this would be implemented during the spring semester.  If we were to do this at the beginning of the year, lots of time, money, and energy would be eaten up by sanitizing the umbrellas. Another issue is the coordination of caucus members who will be distributing the umbrellas. This is especially important as it doesn’t rain at regular intervals, so the distributors must be ready at all times. 

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Solutions

          Even though Project Rainy Days cannot be implemented until the spring, the winter semester will not be wasted. There are many steps to prepare for this project, such as the testing of umbrellas, setting up a payment/logging system, setting up a system for the distributors, and ordering the umbrellas. During the winter semester, we will complete these steps in order to have the project ready for implementation in the spring. In addition to this, in order to coordinate the caucus members who will distribute the umbrellas, we will use a rotation format and contact the distributors the day of. If they have other commitments it is up to them to find a viable replacement and let either us or the event coordinator know. 

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