What’s the holdup on a fourth SafeRide van?

By Jonathan Moynihan

Staff Writer

Jon League, a driver for SafeRide, is pulled over by Salisbury Police while on Onley Road headed towards the New Zoo. The officer approaches the van full of about 20 students on the passenger side. The van reeks of alcohol, and the driver and students alike are nervous they’re about to be in serious trouble.

But the officer isn’t pulling over the long, off-white Salisbury van because of a traffic law violation. It’s because the SafeRide phone lines have been turned off.

"Every weekend our office is flooded with phone calls and pick up requests. Our phone never stops ringing after 10 o’clock. The need is simply too great sometimes," said Executive Vice President of SafeRide Sam Klenkel. "We’ve thought about implementing a second [phone] line, but that’s just a piece of the answer."

The student run organization received the award for Outstanding Registered Student Organization last year, and with its ever-growing popularity, its need for increased effectiveness has never been greater. But sadly, these needs have not been met, specifically their need of a fourth van.

"We have been told that we were getting another van for about a year now. Every semester we plan on hiring more employees based on the guarantee we received about it, but we haven’t gotten it," Klenkel said.

Originally proposed by the Student Safety Committee, a fourth van would allow SafeRide to reach a higher number of students, as well as increasing their response time to those who call in for pick-ups. However, due to their inability to satisfy all the pick-up requests, the overwhelming demand forces operations to shut down.

The police use SafeRide, too. When officers break up parties, they phone in the location of the newly abandoned students to SafeRide. These calls are then relayed to the drivers where they become the top priority, League said.

"When parties get busted, a lot of people call. It’s just a lot of calls from one location," League said.

But when phone lines shut down, police are forced to pull over SafeRide vans in order to relay the location of their new pick-up destination, even further delaying already phoned-in requests. A fourth van would help eliminate slow response times in these extreme cases, Klenkel said.

"There’s lots of evidence that they could really use a fourth van," said SafeRide advisor Heather Holmes. "I think it just needs to be followed through on, and we get something in place for the rest of the semester."

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