Ryan Hodges is a busy guy. A senior taking 16 credits, he spends up to 10 daytime hours each week working on the business of the Designated Driver Shuttle where he is co-director. Come 9:45 p.m., he and fellow co-director Judson Meade are performing the tasks of any other DDS employee: working dispatch, driving the vans, riding along as navigator.
The job is so taxing that it is difficult to retain student employees at minimum wage. Last year, DDS had a shortage of staff that resulted in nearly $19,000 of unspent payroll that rolled over in ASUO coffers. It was the largest amount, both in percentage and in real dollars, of any left over payroll from any ASUO program.
“There’s a high turnover. It’s a sort of stressful job. But more than anything it’s the hours,” Meade said. He estimated 10 to 15 employees quit last year. Hodges said the program hires five to eight students each term. Right now the program is fully staffed with about 20 employees. There is talk of raising student wages. An increase would have to be negotiated with student government officials and the increments in which they would occur has not yet been decided.

The shuttle is a student-run service funded by student incidental fees. It provides free rides to intoxicated students seven nights a week. It’s a rough job for students who have to stay on the clock until 3:15 a.m. On the weekends, vans go out at 10 p.m. and usually run non-stop until 3 a.m.
“It all kind of blends together,” Hodges said of the drunken behavior he’s witnessed during two years at DDS. “Nothing really surprises me anymore.”
The program does a round of hiring at least once each term and is always accepting applications. All employees perform all of the jobs – dispatching, driving, and navigating. The dispatcher stays in the office and fields calls from students who need rides. The navigator rides along and communicates with the dispatcher by radio, takes information from the riders, and plans the route to take.
“We do it for safety reasons and we do it so the service runs more smoothly,” Meade said of having two employees in the van at a time.
Ideally the shuttle runs four vans on weekend nights, which are Thursday through Sunday. Maintenance trouble last year contributed to the unspent payroll. During winter term one van was out-of-service and another had occasional problems, leaving two or three vans to carry as many passengers as possible.
“Basically what it boiled down to was we couldn’t staff the weekend to full capacity,” Meade said.
But more than anything, DDS employee retention troubles come from the late hours for minimum wage, Hodges and Meade said.
To encourage employee retention there have been training events this year designed to help everyone do a better job and keep happy, Meade said. Raising wages would encourage more students to stick around longer. Hodges said the wage ceiling for DDS is actually higher than the program is currently paying.
“We’re (allowed to pay wages) from minimum wage to $9.50 an hour,” Hodges said. “I guess the co-directors before us have chosen to stay at minimum wage.”
[email protected]