Many universities around the United States have safe ride and police escort programs for students who don't feel comfortable walking or driving home late at night. But despite relentless warnings surrounding the dangers of strolling home alone and driving under the influence, many such escort services are not always heavily utilized. Students at the University of Oklahoma (UO) are working to amend this norm.
UO senior Ross Becker has recently proposed an initiative to turn the university's escort program, SafeRides, into a version of the popular Discovery Channel game show "Cash Cab," according to UO's student newspaper.
The program, which would be coined Cash Ride, would give students the opportunity to win small prizes for answering trivia -- mostly university-related -- during the safe ride home. The show would be broadcast on UO's independent television station, but the primary purpose of the program would be to ensure students safe rides home and create incentive to use an otherwise sparsely utilized service.
Abbie Allums, a junior at UO, said that she finds people are currently often too embarrassed or timid to use the SafeRide service.
"I personally have never used [the SafeRide service]," Allums said. "As safe as it is, no one ever wants to admit that they've have too much to drink and that they need a ride home."
While drunk driving may be somewhat less of an issue at a small school like Tufts, the Tufts University Police Department still offers an escort service for students who do not feel comfortable walking home late.
Senior Sarah Driscoll shared Allums' views, noting that she has never used the Tufts police Safety Escort service, mostly because the idea doesn't occur to her while she is walking home late at night.
"I never think about using it," Driscoll said. "I usually walk home with friends."
But with the advent of the Cash Ride idea, Allums said she would be more open to using the service, and she thinks that other students would be too.
"I could see people definitely calling SafeRide more often if there was some incentive," she said. "I think if we made it kind of cool, people would be more open to actually calling for a safe ride rather than driving home after they'd been drinking."
UO Freshman Mars Chapman agreed. "I like the idea because it's a great opportunity for joking around and having fun," Chapman said. "I'd definitely watch it."
Still, Chapman expressed reservations about the program's practicality, citing that it could raise a number of liability issues regarding the exploitation of drunk college students. And since UO is a state university, Chapman was unsure whether taxpayers would be willing to support such an endeavor.
Driscoll was skeptical whether a similar program at Tufts would drastically increase use of the escort service, but she noted that it would, at the very least, increase awareness.
"It might make kids think about it," she said.
