Ahead of the 2017-18 fiscal year, ASUO moved its Safe Ride and Designated Driver Shuttle services — now combined under the Duck Rides umbrella — to the supervision of the University of Oregon Police Department. Now, with both an executive memorandum and senate resolution against the UOPD, ASUO is evaluating how the partnership fits into its values.
“Safe Ride and DDS are essential to campus,” ASUO Senator Nick Keough said, “especially when it comes to reducing drinking and driving and sexual assault and harassment.”
Keough said they see Duck Rides’ services as a prime example of a way to keep UO’s campus safe without a police presence, which they said makes its association with UOPD disappointing. Echoing a central theme of both the ASUO executive’s memorandum to disarm UOPD in October 2020 and the senate’s March 10 resolution, Keough pointed to the history of distrust between police officers and students of color. They said that distrust extends to Duck Rides, too.
Duck Rides program manager Ashley Dougherty said ASUO’s statements against the UOPD and last summer’s protests against police brutality and systemic racism haven’t really changed the way the service operates. “It hasn’t changed the way that we’re operating in the sense that we’re trying to be expansive and diverse and inclusive across the university,” she said. Dougherty said Duck Rides is specifically working with UO’s Accessible Education Center to ensure it is meeting student needs.
“I would implore anybody to reach out with their suggestions,” she said, “and we could see how we could meet the needs of the students better if that’s something we’re not meeting. That’s a priority. You’ve got to hear from the students to be able to serve the students.”
Dougherty said Duck Rides operates relatively autonomously from the UOPD. Most of the employees are UO students, and Dougherty serves as a bridge between them and the larger department. Dougherty said most of the direct communication between student workers and UOPD is limited to emergencies.
Dougherty said the initial partnership between UOPD and ASUO allowed Duck Rides’ services to grow from student-run programs to a more formalized structure. Since UOPD has taken over Duck Rides programs, its ridership has increased to an average of over 40,000 students in a non-COVID-19 year, Dougherty said. This number is an 18% increase from its pre-UOPD form. She said the number of students Duck Rides has had to turn away due to vehicles being at capacity has dropped by 66% and driving infractions have gone down by 80%.
Keough emailed ASUO’s Department Finance Committee — the group that determines Duck Rides’ funding, as well as groups like the Holden Leadership Center, the Mills International Center and the Women’s Center — and asked it to withhold budget increases until ASUO can find another group to house Duck Ride services. “It was going to be a topic this year,” Noah Savage, an ASUO senator and the DFC member assigned to work with Duck Rides, said. “And then it kind of got put on the back burner when we started focusing on our giant athletics redistribution.”
DFC passed a Duck Rides budget of $525,000 for the 2021-22 fiscal year, an increase of roughly $30,000 that was largely based on employee wage increases.
Savage said Duck Rides is generally transparent about how it spends money, with roughly 90% of its overall budget coming out of DFC incidental fee funding — the mandatory fee for UO students that pays for a number of on-campus services like parts of the EMU and student organizations. The remaining 10% comes from the UOPD’s budget and goes primarily to the salaries of its full-time staff, including Dougherty.
Still, Savage said he wouldn’t be surprised if UOPD’s connection to Duck Rides is a central focus of next year’s ASUO and he’s open to potentially reconsidering the partnership.
The senate started a safer transportation committee during winter term in direct response to the UOPD’s involvement in the program, and its Black Lives Matter committee’s resolution against the UOPD and prison labor specifically called for ASUO to end the relationship between the UOPD and Duck Rides.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 3 to correct the incorrect statement that Duck Rides is run out of UOPD’s Office.
