Argument138 清凉夏日小组(2组)

PsychocandyUID: 171159

138The following report appeared in a memo from the vice president of the Southside Transportation Authority.

"We should abandon our current five-year plan to purchase additional buses to serve the campus of Southside University, because students there are unlikely to use them. Consider the results of the recent campaign sponsored by the Environmental Club at Southside University: in a program on the campus radio station, the club asked students to call in and pledge that they would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week. Only ten percent of the students called in and pledged. In view of the campaign's lack of success, we can assume that the bus service we currently offer will continue to be sufficient to serve the university."

结论：不用再购买额外的公车。
电台节目只有10%的学生打进电话并保证坐公车→campaign不成功→bus服务已经足够。

The author concludes that the Southside Transportation Authority should stop the plan to purchase additional buses to serve the campus of Southside University. However, there are several logical flaws in this argument and the use of the result of the environmental campaign is very questionable.

First, the author fails to provide enough evidence to show that the campaign is not successful. The environmental campaign on the campus is in the form of a radio program in which Southside University’s environmental club asked students to call in and pledge that they would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week. Only ten percent of the students at Southside University called in and pledged in the radio program at the university. This result is not sufficient to prove that students do not support the campaign. First, we lack the information on what percent of students listened to the program. If fifteen percent of Southside University’s students had listened to the program then ten percent could have been a rather high figure which means that two out of three students who listened to the program had called in and pledged.

In addition, granted the campaign was not successful, there is no evidence to show that the current bus service will continue to be sufficient. The author fails to establish the causal relationship between the failure of the campaign and the sufficiency of the current bus service. Even if we admit that only a small portion of Southside University’s students support the campaign, there is no evidence to demonstrate that students will not need more bus service. Firstly and most importantly, there is no information about students’ actual use of the current bus service and their opinion about it, questions such as how many of them use bus to commute and do they think the current bus service is convenient. Secondly, we lack information about why the campaign has not been successful. It is possible that students do not support the campaign which suggested commuting more by bus just because there are not enough bus lines, and not because students are not environmentally conscious. Finally, even if the current bus service has been sufficient, it does not mean that students will not need more bus service in the future as students are likely to eventually find using bus is more convenient than other ways of commuting and turn to bus service. We also lack the information about the possible change in the number of the University’s students in the near future.

In conclusion, the author’s argument over the Southside Transportation Authority’s current bus service plan is not convincing and so his conclusion that the authority should abandon the plan to purchase more buses is groundless. To strengthen the argument, the author needs more thorough investigation about students’ actual attitude to the environmental campaign and also about the students’ real need concerning commuting.