It’s Sunday night and after a fun weekend around Raleigh, you have to take your car back to the Resident Storage lot. Then, you remember the busses have stopped running.
To many freshmen, this is their typical Sunday night. The safety escort’s sole purpose is to “safely” take students to where they need to go on campus; however, lately the reports from fellow students have questioned if the safety escort is actually serving its purpose.
Fellow students have described experiences that can only be classified as horror stories. One reports that while she was taking her car back with a friend, she called the escort. After waiting almost an hour, the car pulled up with another group of passengers. After being told the escort could only take one of them and since her friend was not the one to call, she would have to stay. This resulted in them both walking back from the Resident Storage lot in the dark.
Other experiences involve a safety escort driver texting and making personal phone calls while transporting students. One driver even threatened to force students to walk back to campus from the Resident Storage lot, instead of driving them.
Along with these actions, safety escort drivers exercise bias against male drivers, thinking female passengers need the service more. These attitudes have scared men away from using the escort service. Some cut their weekend vacations to home early to ensure they would catch the bus from the lot. Others choose to make the trek from the Resident Storage lot to their dorm on campus, despite the dangers.
From my personal experiences with the service, I have found that certain drivers act as the professionals they are, while others show zero concern for the well-being of those they drive by texting or taking phone calls. This also includes a disrespectful attitude towards students they assume are taking the escort as a taxi service.
While students believe this service is ran by Campus Police, which has proven itself useful time and time again in various public safety matters around campus, the safety escort service is not, which could account for their falling short on their professionalism.
The individual drivers vary, but some compromise the safety of their passengers. They should still be held accountable for this. Campus Police should provide more stringent safety education requirements for some of the less safety-oriented drivers. A strict set of rules, including no texting or talking on the phone while transporting students, should be in place and drivers should keep a positive attitude throughout their shift to provide students with not only an example for how they should act behind the wheel, but to keep them safe while using the service.
However for the more extreme cases, drivers who repeatedly show flagrant disregard for students’ safety should not be driving under the contract. If the actions of the drivers cause students to choose to walk back in the dark from the Resident Storage lot rather than trust the safety escort to do their job, then there is doubt they should be allowed to stay on as an escort. The safety escort service is there to keep students safe, not to be recreation time for contracted drivers.
