Two employees of the student group that provides a designated-driver shuttle service to intoxicated University students were caught drinking alcohol in the organization’s office during working hours early Saturday morning.
Department of Public Safety officers responded to an open-container call at the Designated Driver Shuttle office in the EMU at about 2:30 a.m. on Saturday after students witnessed people in the office drinking beer.
DPS did not issue citations but relinquished the matter to Student Judicial Affairs, DPS Interim Director Tom Hicks said. He would not comment about details of the incident.
DDS Co-Director Katy Lang said she arrived at about 2:15 a.m. to find the two dispatchers drinking. She said the matter is being taken seriously and the employees are “being dealt with accordingly.”
“The whole thing is still very surprising,” she said. “I’m just kind of speechless.”
Student Judicial Affairs Director Chris Loschiavo said his office will handle the case, but he said he hasn’t seen any documents related to the case and doesn’t know if it will be handled as an employment, conduct code or organizational issue.
“I have very, very sketchy facts at this point,” he said.
DDS shuttles run every night from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. The organization received about $92,600 in student money this year, according to a Jan. 26, 2004 Emerald article.
“The shuttle allows intoxicated students and their friends an (sic) safe alternative to driving drunk, endangering themselves and others,” according the group’s Web site.
Assault Prevention Shuttle driver David Goward said he reported the drinking to DPS shortly after 2 a.m. on Saturday after he observed a six-pack of beer and other assorted bottles on the desks in the DDS office when he returned to lock the APS office.
Goward said the DDS members may have been drinking for an hour to an hour and a half because they had not been answering their phones.
“We were concerned that they
were not running for some reason or another,” he said.
APS Education Coordinator Sarah Wells said official APS logs show DDS has shut down three times and not run at full capacity one time since April 8, when APS began recording the dates.
Goward said DDS has shut down several times this term, including last Thursday, because members forgot
the keys to the organization’s vans or didn’t show up for work.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” he said, adding that APS receives an “unfair burden” when DDS isn’t running.
“It puts a lot of stress back on APS,” he said. “We’re putting more students at risk just because DDS doesn’t feel like working that night.”
Lang said there have been times DDS hasn’t run.
“I don’t hear everything, believe it or not, because I don’t work every night,” she said, adding that she deals with problems as they arise.
Goward also said he observed a 15-person DDS van packed with more than 20 passengers in southwest Eugene early Saturday morning.
“They barely were able to shut the doors there were so many people in there,” he said.
Goward said he plans to file a grievance with the ASUO because of the incident, adding that the packed van put passengers at risk.
Lang said she hasn’t heard complaints about overcrowding.
“Other than word of mouth, it’s kind of hard to say when that’s happening and when it’s not,” she said.
This isn’t the first time DDS has come under fire for its practices. It received multiple complaints about drivers neglecting duties in 2002, according to a March 8, 2002 Emerald article.

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