June 17: the day my beloved CTA U-Pass, courtesy of DePaul University, will expire and leave me to find my own means of transportation. It could be easy enough to walk to Walgreens, Dominick’s or CVS and pick up a monthly or weekly CTA pass, but I’m not used to doing it, and frankly, it’s too expensive.

Last summer, I took a course at DePaul and was pleasantly surprised that I was given a CTA pass for the whole summer—even though my class lasted only five weeks. But what am I supposed to do this summer? I’m staying in the city, I have a job I need to get to and I’ll be starting school again in the fall. Is it too much to ask that DePaul provide discounted U-Passes for students staying in the city over break?

The requirements to get the desired summer U-Pass for undergraduate and graduate students are as follows: take one or more credit hours (basically sign up for one class consisting of two to 4.5 credit hours), pay $52.50 (it comes out of tuition) and ride the CTA for most of the summer—June 17 to Aug. 19. And don’t try to beat the system, people; if you sign up for the class, get the U-Pass and then immediately drop the class, the CTA pass will stop working automatically and the fees will drop from your tuition.

DePaul’s $52.50 U-Passes for most of the summer are a great bargain, considering that the CTA normally costs $2.25 per ride, $5.75 for a one-day pass, $14 for a three-day, $23 for a seven-day and $86 for a monthly pass. So what it comes down to is that if I want to buy three monthly passes, it’s going to cost me $258 to get unlimited rides for the summer; that’s almost five times the amount I’d be paying with the DePaul CTA U-Pass.

“I am not going to live with my mom for the summer and have her drive me around the suburbs. I have an apartment, I have a job, I am going to stay down here and don’t want to either have to pay $2.25 every time I want to take the CTA or $80 for a 30-day pass that might not get used that much,” said DePaul student Elizabeth Peterson. “It’s a lose-lose situation.”

The summer U-Pass distribution at DePaul has only been around since 2009, but it is still apparent students rely on the CTA to get them from place to place—whether enrolled in summer sessions or not. “DePaul is a school that supports students getting internships for academic credit and for just building up resumes,” said Peterson. “Students who can prove that they have found a job or internship for the summer that relates to their area of study… should be allowed to pay $52.50 for a pass.”

Students travel, go home and go abroad during the summer, so it would be a waste to print off all U-Passes and then have to cancel charges to tuition. But students working in the summer who can provide evidence they have jobs or internships should have the chance to apply for a U-Pass. That way, DePaul could charge only the students who need U-Passes and print only the necessary materials.