The Fall Bike Challenge encourages students and commuters to get out and ride their bikes.

By Katelyn Weisbrod
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The best way to get college students’ attention is simple: use social and free stuff.

That’s the logic behind the Fall Bike Challenge, a photo contest on Instagram to promote biking around the University of Iowa campus.

The UI Office of Sustainability organized the challenge to encourage people, especially college students, to get out and bike instead of driving.

Cyclists should take a photo when they go out on a bike ride between now and Oct. 11, using the hashtag #fallbikechallenge2015 on social media to enter the contest.

The Sustainability Office has held other contests in the past to promote biking, including the Winter Warrior Challenge and the Earth Month Bike Challenge. These events involved logging miles and trips, but the Fall Bike Challenge is doing away with that.

Willy Tan, an intern in the Office of Sustainability, created the contest.

“We aren’t taking into account how many days or miles someone rides. We wanted to make it more participatory where people just take photos,” Tan said. “We wanted to get rid of the point system and get more people on their bikes and reward them for doing so.”

There are three categories that cyclists can enter: commuter, recreational, and teams. In addition to the main hashtag, cyclists should use #UIcommuter, #UIrecbike, or a hashtag with their team name, depending on the category they would like to enter with.

Every week, the Sustainability Office will randomly select photos to win prizes such as bike helmets and Yotopia gift cards.

At the end of the contest, there will be a first-, second-, and third-place winner in each category to win bigger prizes, like gift cards to local bike shops.

“We’re trying to make the challenges a little more fun,” said George McCrory, a communications specialist in the Sustainability Office. “I don’t know what kind of photos we’re really looking for — just people out riding. The other contests get pretty intense with logging the miles. This is just get out and ride, have a great time. That’s all our intention.”

This challenge is one of the ways that UI maintains its “bicycle friendly” certification by the League of American Bicyclists.

The state of Iowa is ranked 28th in the nation for being bicycle friendly, and the UI is the only university in Iowa certified as “bicycle friendly.”

The certification is based on the five E’s: evaluation and planning, engineering, encouragement, education, and enforcement.

“This is a way a school can set itself apart from others,” said Amelia Neptune, the program coordinator for Bicycle Friendly Businesses and Universities. “There’s also the part of being able to promote it through admissions and recruitment, saying this is a place where you can get around safely and conveniently, and students can save money because they can easily get around on bikes and don’t need a car.”

The contest winners will be selected by a committee in the Sustainability Office.

“At the end of the competition, we will look at the most engaging, high-quality photos,” McCrory said. “We look at the artistic quality. It doesn’t have to be a great looking bike, just a good picture.”