The student Facebook group for TARTA service coming to the University no longer exists online, but vice president of the group, Amanda Milkovich, said the group still exists.

“The group exists, just not on Facebook,” Milkovich said.

Formerly, the online group had more than 900 members, but the person who created it is no longer involved in the group and deleted its online presence.

The group is working to set up a student survey to get more information about what students want and is communicating with both the Undergraduate Student Government and TARTA.

“We need to get student’s point of view on it and make a real plan,” Milkovich said.

USG is working on getting the survey out as well, said Emily Ancinec, president of USG.

“We were looking into [a survey] to see what demand will be, and ridership,” Ancinec said. “We want to present it to the entire student body as a whole, to on and off campus students.”

After the USG meeting where every party involved got a chance to speak, USG presented Milkovich with questions about inaccuracies and who people in the student group were.

“We’re interested [in TARTA service],” Ancinec said. “We posed some questions to the student group, like what it will look like and what the demand would be.”

Ancinec said that was all USG had done since the meeting.

“If a group wants to form an ad hoc meeting, they can go ahead with it,” Ancinec said. “We’re not really working on it because we haven’t heard a lot.”

USG will pursue the topic if there is interest.

“It might be a slower process than the student group initially expected, because we don’t have all the answers,” Ancinec said. “I think it’s one of those things that would be great to have but we have to wait for what the students want.”

Milkovich said her goal is to get TARTA service to the University by January.

“I’m just taking it one step at a time,” Milkovich said. “It’s also going to depend on price, it won’t be cheap to have the buses come down here.”

The University is waiting for answers to the questions presented at the meeting, said Brad Leigh, executive director of Business Operations at the University.

“This is not a University-led initiative,” Leigh said. “The University doesn’t have funding earmarked for this initiative. At the end of the day, that’s really what it boils down to.”

Milkovich said she is acting as a liason, or middleman and her idea is to present a plan to USG and then for it to go to the University and others who need to see it.

“[We’ll] see what they do with it,” Milkovich said. “That’s all I can do because I’m not employed by anyone.”

TARTA representatives were present at the USG meeting and gave the cost of the service. Steve Atkinson, director of marketing at TARTA, said since the meeting, there is no change in the situation on TARTA’s end.

“As far as us having an agreement or starting service or anything like that, no, not that I know of,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said the situation will remain the same until TARTA is approached to do a contract or there are other developments.

USG has not had any direct contact with TARTA, but might in the future.

“It would be one of those things we would do after the survey,” Ancinec said. “Like TARTA said at the meeting, they are sort of reactionary to the students so we would get the results and if there is a demand, we go to TARTA and say, there’s a demand, can we do something about it?”