Where’s the ATM? We asked for one in April and got overwhelming support from students and post office employees, but clearly the college’s top decision making, Automated Teller Machine-procuring brass didn’t hear us.
So we’re asking again-will you please, please put an ATM somewhere on the Mills College campus?
This will be the second year there is no ATM, which is an outrage on a thoroughly modern, connected campus such as this one. We have flat panel monitors in our computer labs, buy books with credit cards and have high speed internet access in the dorms, but we can’t get cash to eat in the Tea Shop.
The last ATM was lost to vandalism, but a new one could be protected easily.
Instead of leaving it in an outdoor corridor, put it somewhere there is heavy foot traffic. Better yet, put it inside. Put the ATM just inside the Tea Shop so students can access it during the day. Or put it in the bookstore. Either place would provide a secure setting for the ATM at night and would make money available to students for a reasonable number of hours every day.
There are a limited number of ways to get cash on campus now, and they are not sufficient. Sometimes, but not always, the bookstore will give $5 cash back on ATM purchases. The post office does the same thing, but they don’t like to. Students can also take a check to the cashier’s office and cash it, but many students do not carry their checkbooks around with them, especially since almost everybody (with the noted exceptions of the Tea Shop and Mills College) takes credit or check cards these days.
The ATM closest to campus is at the 7-Eleven on MacArthur Boulevard where a security guard was shot and killed in a robbery last year. A Mills student was assaulted on her bicycle on that same stretch of Mac Arthur in the spring. The college is concerned about the safety of an ATM, but what about the safety of students? We shouldn’t have to compromise our personal security in order to get money to spend on campus.
There are numerous reasons to get an ATM for students and the only reason not to doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
