With almost 400 freshmen living in the Stadium Park apartments, the Assault Prevention Shuttle had no trouble making their case to the ASUO for more funding to increase services to the area.
At last week’s ASUO Senate Meeting, APS Co-director Zane Ritt presented an emergency over-realized request for $5,779 in a preemptive attempt to help APS deal with the influx of new freshmen – a request that was kick-started by a $4,000 donation from the Office of Student Affairs at the end of the summer.
Ritt said the service has already seen an increase in rides requested to the Kinsrow area, and expects that need to increase as the year goes on. “We’ve already started to feel the strain,” he said.
But whether student funding might be used to simply shuttle students back and forth between Stadium Park and the University is a question on many senators’ minds.
Many senators expressed concern that student funds had to be used to address the University’s choice to house students so far off campus at last week’s meeting.
“I use APS a lot,” said Hiro Ishi, a student who rides APS to the Kinsrow area regularly. “For me it’s OK that student funds are used to pay for the extra need, but students living around campus might not want to see their money used for it.”
Ritt shared a similar sentiment.
“Student safety is first and foremost, but I don’t know if it should be the responsibility of students to pay for their own safety,” he said.
But Robin Holmes, vice president of Student Life, says the students shouldn’t worry about it becoming a shuttle service. She said the funding, provided to APS from the Office of Student Affairs, was simply to help APS cope with the likely increase in demand.
“If we need to change mid-course, then of course we will,” said Holmes. “We’re going to do whatever we need to do to make sure students are safe. We just need to see and hear any information students have about it. We have staff who are keeping their ear to the ground.”
In the past, APS service to the Kinsrow area has been very limited. One shuttle with a maximum of three passengers once every two hours meant only 15 students per night could get a ride. The travel time, gas, and extra wear-and-tear on APS vans had forced the service to keep the number of trips to the area low, said Ritt, but the recent funds will help triple the number of available rides.
And it might not have come at a better time – there have already been two incidents this year involving APS vans, riders, and their safety.
In one instance, a group of female students had a miscommunication over their pickup spot with an APS dispatcher, causing them to miss their ride. The APS base soon received a phone call from the students asking where the shuttle was and claiming there was a group of men soliciting sex from them. The dispatcher told the girls to wait in a nearby market and had the shuttle turn around and pick them up.
“If what’s happened so far is any indication, we’re going to need to step up our services to the Kinsrow area,” Ritt said.
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