"THE NEXTEL customer you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later." These are the words which doom so many students to walking home at night when they call SafeRide. Ironically, this unresponsiveness undermines the goal of providing students safety when they feel too uncomfortable to walk home. Safe Ride is plagued by inadequate service, especially during periods of high demand.
The most pressing issue facing SafeRide is the meager size of its fleet. Capt. Michael Coleman of the University Police said, "There are two vehicles. One works with the Clemons late night crowd, and the other works with the rest of the Grounds."
Oddly, SafeRide allocates one vehicle exclusively as a library shuttle even on the weekends. Few students actually go to the library on Friday nights to study. In fact, Clemons closes at midnight on Fridays. Who exactly is SafeRide picking up here then?
Perhaps Clemons just serves as a centralized location where students can go to get a ride. But this doesn't seem to be convincing justification, since the library is in the heart of central Grounds completely detached from the epicenter of social activity occurring on Friday and Saturday nights.
Yet another problem with the Clemons SafeRide pick-up designation is that this location is relatively safe compared to the Rugby Rd. area and beyond. Students in far more dangerous areas ought to have a greater priority.
For example, I witnessed a startling incident on University Ave., at the corner on which Mellow Mushroom is located. It was 2 a.m. on a Thursday night and there was an unsettling altercation between a man and Charlottesville police officers. With their guns locked and loaded, the officers confronted a man who purportedly threatened Jimmie John's employees.
Or consider the recent rash of crimes off Grounds. Recently, a student was robbed while walking home through the Lambeth colonnades and another student was shot on Wertland St.
Incidents like this provide frightening examples of the threats students can face in the more active locations of University nightlife. By contrast, I have yet to meet a student who has witnessed such an occurrence by the Clemons library bus stop. Even if it does occur, I have serious doubts that it is as common as it is on University Ave.
The library service diverts limited resources to areas needing less attention. SafeRide should expand the role of the Clemons library shuttle. Even more beneficial would be the expansion of the fleet itself.
As for the recorded message mentioned earlier, which many students hear after calling SafeRide on Friday or Saturday nights, this recording has underscored another major shortcoming: insufficient phone capacity. Coleman agrees with this observation and notes that "there are several lines that rollover [indicating] that several lines are full."
Obviously, Friday and Saturday nights are the times during which most parties and social functions occur. It is ridiculous for SafeRide not to acknowledge this fact and fail to cater to a foreseeable high demand.
To rectify this problem and others, SafeRide's prerogative should be to satisfy the considerable demand for their service. An obvious solution would be to expand the number of lines available to their operators. Alternatively, SafeRide could place its callers on hold and provide a message indicating the fact that they are busy at the moment. Thus, if students were aware of a high-volume of callers, they would either wait to be taken off hold or they would call back so that they need not walk home. In effect, this would provide students a safer alternative to getting home.
Even so, waiting could pose yet another complication because students might be less safe standing in a location for a long time rather than walking home. The solution to this concern is the expansion of SafeRide's fleet, as suggested earlier.
In the late 1980s, the University Police Department established the SafeRide program in order "to provide a safe passage for students who would otherwise have to walk alone at night." Regrettably, SafeRide has strayed far from their mission statement and at an unfortunate time in which there has been a spur of crimes around Grounds. SafeRide must re-vamp their program at this critical time to help secure the safety and well-being of students.
Charles Lee is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint writer.
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