Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Tufts should consider a student-run safe-rides program

In light of the assault and armed robbery that took place near campus last week, many students may feel uneasy walking home alone at night. For the next few weeks at least, the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) may see increased use of its student escort service, which offers students free rides from TUPD officers to or from any on-campus location.

Or it may not.

While the TUPD's escort service is a good option for students worried about their safety, it is not a perfect one. Several flaws taint the program, including the fact that it does not function between all off-campus houses, as TCU President Neil DiBiase pointed out in today's news article.

In addition, Tufts police say that they reserve the right to call Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) in order to assist students they believe are dangerously intoxicated.

While understandable, this caveat puts students in a difficult position. If, for example, a student were with an intoxicated friend at a party, he or she would face a tough dilemma: Walk home late at night in a dangerous area with an intoxicated friend, or call the police and potentially risk having the friend put on Probation I, the consequence of a second TEMS call?

Two years ago, the TCU Senate passed a resolution that offered a potential solution to this problem: a student-run escort service. In light of the increasing level of crime near campus over the past few years, it may once again be time to reconsider this option.

A student-run safe-rides program would help alleviate the problems with the TUPD service by capitalizing on Tufts students' favorite pastime: volunteering. Such a program could extend to off-campus locations and would make students more comfortable in calling for assistance, since they would be calling their peers rather than the police.

Of course, such a program would still require escort drivers to call for medical help if they saw a student in need of it. But students would still be more likely to trust their peers with this responsibility than the police, whom they might choose to avoid altogether for fear of punishment.

The TCU Senate passed a resolution in November 2006 calling for a safe-rides program, but it has yet to be established. The resolution's goals have become even more relevant since then, after a string of sexual assaults last year and several robberies this year made many students worry about their safety near campus late at night.

Models for such a program have been proven to work on other college campuses. At James Madison University in Virginia, for example, a functional safe-rides program operates to prevent drunk driving among students.

The JMU program has the same ultimate goal as a Tufts program would: keeping students safe. Many Tufts students want to save the world, but the best place to start is right here at home.

Let's make Tufts a safer place.