Sometimes a safe ride

Walking into the library last Wednesday to make your way to the computer lab to type up that all-important take-home mid-term, you probably sauntered by a couple of librarians who make work-study money.That guy at the desk who just helped you print off that mid-term: also probably makes work-study money.

Those dudes in the green gym-shorts with the hairy legs helping to referee your intramural dodge-ball game: some of them make work-study money.

Those people over at Huden, the ones who clean up the ice cream machine, refill the soda, refill that awful “cheese” sauce and restack the tray’s that your lazy ass put on the belt wrong: some of them make work-study money.

And the young lady who is just now driving you home at 1:10 in the morning in a sweet and toasty CSC van – after you got too wasted to even look at a car — she isn’t getting anything.

And you’re only seeing her because you were lucky that the one night of the week you got trashed, she volunteered to sit around all night and wait for your call — for no compensation!

Over the last year or so, the SafeRide program has been more and more visible on campus for one simple reason: it runs so infrequently that when it actually is up and running, we get an e-mail notifying us.

It isn’t a tough job, running SafeRide. You sit in a room and watch TV, maybe do some homework. You could even bring a friend and do it together.

And if you’re getting paid to do it, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do that.

The SafeRide program is a beautiful idea. Being a small campus, and having a good number of upperclassmen living off that campus, there are parties being thrown almost nightly, sometimes miles from school.

If people want to go to these parties bad enough, and many do, they’ll go no matter what. They’ll go even if they won’t get some work done. And they’ll definitely go even if they have to drive. And if they drive to the party, they’ll need to drive back.

To successfully run SafeRide and have too-drunk-to-drive people call anytime they need a ride, it needs to be running. And it needs to be running every night.

If a great restaurant is open one night a week, at random, chances are people are going to go to the place that’s open all the time, even if the food isn’t as good and there’s a chance they’ll die. Salmonella or no, I’m going to Taco Bell just ’cause the Sirloin Saloon isn’t open.

And it isn’t an issue of there not being enough money. If the SA can give out a little money for an Anime club (and I’m not knocking you guys, Akira absolutely reigns) they can give out some money for this.

Those people running intramurals are helping people have a blast on a Wednesday night, but they aren’t saving lives.

A little bit of money is a small price to pay to avoid a potential lethal drunk-driving situation. And it’s certainly the least we can give to someone who is willing to sit around and help make the streets a safer place for the people of Castleton and its students.

And a little bit of money is all we need to make sure that someone is sitting in that little room to do just that.

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