As the fall semester begins at Mississippi State University, there are new students, new additions to Davis Wade stadium and the Student Association unveils Cowbell Cabs, Block by Block and Campaign for Change — three programs designed to benefit the student body. 
In past years, the Night Route has been available to students to transport them home safely when they’ve been at bars and restaurants around town, but the SA has opted for a new system this year — Cowbell Cabs. 
The Cowbell Cabs program aims to accomplish the same goal as the Night Route by providing a free cab service to MSU students on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
The cabs will not run on home football game weekends, due to the influx of traffic and people. 
Students will be able to use the cabs by calling a cab to pick them up and showing the cab driver their student ID. They can also bring one guest along for the ride. 
Cowbell Cabs will focus on transporting students from places in the main areas of downtown Starkville and the Cotton District back to their homes. The service will not take students from their homes to bars or restaurants, and service routes will exclude Cowbells, the Highlands and Wal-Mart. 
JoJo Dodd, SA Chief Administration Officer, said the SA partnered with McClain Taxi and Bulldog Shuttle and Cab for a semester-long contract to operate and provide licensed cab drivers for four vans that will be marked as Cowbell Cabs. 
Cowbell Cabs is currently in its second weekend of operation. Cabs began running August 14. 
“The first weekend of the SA Cowbell Cabs program was phenomenal,” he said. “We did very little, apart from social media, to promote the service to allow for a sort of soft-opening, and we ended up transporting around 150 people.”
Dodd said the ridership this weekend was far beyond the average number of passengers transported in previous semesters with the Night Route. 
He also said as students become more aware of the cabs, he hopes to see the program’s success continue. 
“Considering this and the models of other universities who have implemented similar systems, our program shows early signs of great future success,” he said. 
The Block by Block program, an idea SA President Brett Harris presented during his campaign in spring 2014, has also begun. 
Block by Block allows students who have purchased meal plans to donate one of their block meals per year to a virtual food bank. The donated block meals will then be distributed to MSU students in need. 
The student donation period began Monday and will continue until Wednesday. 
Dodd said he hopes to reach the SA’s current goal of 1,000 donated meals, and that Aramark plans to match student donations. 
Brett Harris, SA President, said seeing the program come to fruition has been exciting and encouraging because of the students’ and university’s support. 
“We’re really impressed by the support we’ve seen already,” he said. “Four hundred and fifty people have signed up, so far.”
Harris said originally, he had not considered asking Aramark to match the number of meal donations received through the program, but was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them. 
“We really just thought about trying to get students to donate, but then they came to us with the idea to match us,” he said. 
Thomas Bourgeois, Dean of Students, said because the program is new, the process of distributing the meals after the donation period ends has yet to be finalized. 
Bourgeois said he hopes the SA will play an active role in helping get meals distributed to the students who need them. 
“We really want them to decide, ‘who are we trying to serve with this program?
Is it first year students? Second year students? Grad students?” he said. “It’s about matching the need with the generosity.”
Besides these two programs, SA plans to introduce “Campaign for Change,” an effort to increase communication between SA and the student body, this fall as well. 
The SA will have a white board set up on the Drill Field and designate a topic on which students can then write their concerns, suggestions and thoughts on. The aim, according to Dodd, is to give students a tangible way to express their opinions. 
September’s topic will be Parking Services. 
Dodd said he believes the campaign will be successful because students have a wealth of opinions to share. 
“I think when students have the opportunity to voice their opinions, they do,” he said.