"SAFERIDE'S purpose is to provide a safe passage for students who would otherwise have to walk alone at night," claims SafeRide's Web site. Unfortunately, this purpose fails to mention that only the passage of sober students is allowed by SafeRide. SafeRide's restriction goes against the spirit of ensuring student safety and leaves those most vulnerable in danger.
Let us examine the purpose of SafeRide more closely. Because of crime throughout the city, students may not feel comfortable walking home. This seems especially applicable for young woman who are susceptible to sexual assault. But students most susceptible to crime are those who are intoxicated. As countless studies show (and any observer can see), alcohol causes the loss of fine motor coordination and reflexes. These effects put the intoxicated most at risk for assault, robbery, etc.
Nevertheless, the administration may hesitate to agree that intoxicated individuals deserve SafeRide just as much as their sober counterparts. Students engaging in sometimes illegal drinking somehow make it seem that they do not deserve a convenience that someone studying at the library deserves.
We should laud efforts to promote responsible drinking, but we must also recognize that nothing will deter college students from drinking. The administration should remain dedicated to all students, intoxicated or not.
The statistics also support the need of SafeRide for the intoxicated. A 2004 joint study completed by the Harvard School of Public Health, Saint Joseph's University and the University of Arizona studied 119 schools nationwide with startling results. Women from colleges with medium and high binge-drinking rates had more than 1.5-times increased chance of being raped while being intoxicated versus those from schools with low binge-drinking rates. Obviously, the results of these studies call for more general measures, such as alcohol education and sexual assault education. But while it may be more important to address the cause of this problem in the long run, we cannot forget to address the symptoms in the short run. This includes the institution of all sexual assault preventive measures.
The University Police run SafeRide, and University Police Captain Michael Coleman said there were three main reasons for prohibiting intoxicated people from using SafeRide. First, police officers have an obligation to arrest those who are intoxicated in public. Second, Coleman stated, "Intoxicated people are unpredictable." Intoxicated individuals could distract the driver, causing a safety hazard for all in the van. Finally, intoxicated individuals pose the risk of "losing body fluids," exposing health hazards. These arguments should not be disregarded but seem to pose only small obstacles rather than insurmountable walls.
Coleman stated that if a person were only mildly intoxicated an officer likely would not know. He went on to say the way an officer responds to any student suspected of being intoxicated depends on the circumstances. If a student does not seem capable of taking care of him or herself, for example, the student will be taken to the hospital or arrested. It seems as if a taboo intoxication level exists where intoxication past this point means students cannot take SafeRide.
But the line cannot be drawn clearly. As Coleman himself noted, officers are not exactly smelling students' breath. Officers have little to go by to determine if a person is intoxicated. Different officers will respond to the same student differently, likely based on their feelings toward alcohol. Because students are unsure if they will be accepted or turned down, they are deterred from even calling SafeRide. This will be the case even if the student is far from "losing body fluids" and would provide no problem in the van.
There are several ways to offer Safe-Ride to the intoxicated while minimizing the objections Coleman brought up. Perhaps one step could be to remove police officers from the SafeRide van and hire commercial drivers, as late night buses do. These drivers would have the same hesitations in driving intoxicated individuals that officers may have, but may be more accommodating as a group. A civilian would feel less responsibility than an officer to punish those that have been drinking. These drivers, then, would encourage more students to board in general. Furthermore, we cannot overlook the fact that students may feel less intimidated to use SafeRide if a police officer were not driving, and thus, use the service more often.
Yet these commercial drivers would still have the power to remove individuals from the van if they fear the individual would vomit (making the van temporarily unusable), but those removed could be strongly encouraged to call Yellow Cab. Likewise, if students (drunk or sober) distract the driver, they could be removed from the van. These measures would control distracting behavior or vomiting that Coleman alluded to, but would allow SafeRide to serve intoxicated students far more frequently.
At many colleges across the country, equivalents of SafeRide can be found serving all students, regardless if they had been drinking or not. Recognizing that student safety takes the greatest priority, the service overlooks what state the student may be in. These universities have wisely realized that it seems far more likely for a young, intoxicated woman to be raped while walking home than for an intoxicated rider to distract the driver and cause a collision. It will be a matter of time -- and increasing numbers of sexual assault victims -- before our University reaches the same conclusion.
Rajesh Jain is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at rjain@cavalierdaily.com.
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