| by Manu Krishnan A string of recent near-campus attacks have raised the perennial cries for more street lighting, an increased police presence, and, of course, the expansion of the Student Escort Service.
On May 8, a female NU student was accosted and sexually abused by an unknown assailant near the corner of Emerson and Maple Avenues. Just one day later, another female student was attacked while getting out of her car on Dempster Street. In both cases, the victims narrowly escaped more serious injury, relying on the chance presence of a police car and the fortunate shine of oncoming headlights, respectively, to scare off their attackers. While there is no indication that either of the recent victims passed on the popular escort service because of excessive wait times, the assaults have opened the tabled debate about whether the service should be expanded to accommodate more riders.
Nearly every NU student has used the service. Those little white compacts whizzing around campus, carrying riders to and fro (as long as the destination is within the boundaries of Central, Dodge and Oakton Avenues); the drivers are always a little stressed, in frenetic communication with the dispatch. When it’s available, students see it as a safe and convenient way to get where they want to go, avoiding bad weather, and at times, light exercise.
Unfortunately for students, it doesn’t look like the wait times at the service are going to get shorter any time soon. In fact, Jaime Jimenez, Assistant Director of Residential Life and Coordinator of the Sexual Assault Prevention program, sees things possibly getting worse. “We are really going to need more employees for the coming fall,” she said. “A lot of people on our staff are graduating, and there could be a shortage again.”
Jimenez thinks the Student Escort Service is efficient and does the best job it can. “When we were finally operating at full staff in January of this year, were able to provide 8,000 escorts, averaging about 125 an evening,” she says. “And 80 percent of our riders were women. Given the fact that it is a student organization, I think we do pretty well.”
When dealing with wait times, Jimenez says students should just wait it out. “Wait times really depend on many factors, including what day of the week it is and how bad the weather is. There’s going to be things we can’t control, and sometimes there just will be a time wait. We ask students to please bear with the crunch.”
The Escort Service currently has a squad of three cars, seating two staff members in front and three riders in the back. It currently employs nearly 30 people. Still, the long wait times beg certain questions of changes within the system, either through the expansion of staff or through the addition of more cars. Jimenez says the problem is essentially one of staffing. “For the longest time, we had trouble finding people to work for us. It’s a hard job, with difficult hours. There was a time when we operating well below capacity, and I think that’s why you had the long time waits.”
As for the possibility of hiring outside help to run the service, Jimenez said it wasn’t really an option. “Basically we would only think of doing that if we didn’t have enough student staff at any given time. You can’t offer that kind of irregular employment at difficult hours to outsiders. It pretty much has to be run by students.”
According to Jimenez, buying more cars would not make sense if there were not enough people to staff them. She declined to comment on the size of the Student Escort Service budget, but said that practical considerations preclude the buying of more cars. “If we don’t have the people to drive them, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said. Jimenez also said that expanding the service to include larger vehicles such as mini-vans couldn’t be done because of safety concerns. “We realize that we can only take three riders at a time, but we don’t really want to use mini-vans or larger cars because we don’t think our drivers would be comfortable with them. Most students feel safer driving smaller cars that they’re used to.”
According to one of the Escort Service’s own employees, though, there is a more compelling reason why an extra car wouldn’t help. “People abuse the system all the time,” says senior Dene Brown. “Basically, the Student Escort Service was designed to take one to two people who otherwise would have had to a walk a long distance at night. But what we see is people constantly calling in groups of three or even four trying to score rides to bars. And what’s most frustrating is that a lot of the time they don’t even show up. It cuts our efficiency a lot.” She added that “adding a new car wouldn’t solve anything. There would just be more people calling unnecessarily.”
These things are out the service’s control. “We certainly hear of these complaints,” she says, “but our non-judgmental policy is very important to us. We don’t ask questions, and we pick people up regardless of circumstances.”
Brown, however, was a little less diplomatic. “I feel really sorry when I take a call and I have to tell a person that they have to wait an hour, while we have to waste time taking a group of three somewhere. If I can help it, I’ll make the group wait longer, but I can’t always do that.”
Even though nearly every Northwestern student is aware of the Escort Service, few take advantage of or even know about the availability of the White Route Shuttle, which has 10 stops on and around campus and runs from 9:00 p.m. to 3 a.m. On most nights, the shuttle runs largely empty. Said Brown, “People bring up the idea of mini-vans for the escort service a lot. What people don’t realize is that we do have mini-vans. It’s called the shuttle! I can’t believe people will wait up to an hour for us when the shuttle would have taken them to their destination three times in that period.”
Jimenez says that while she understands student frustrations, she wishes people would be aware of the hard work the Student Escort Service performs. “These are just students after all, and they put in very stressful and difficult hours in addition to their normal schedule. They’re doing the best they can, and when they read complaints in the newspapers, it can lower morale. As it is, we work hard to keep a full staff.”
Brown agreed, adding that all the hand wringing after the latest incident masks a bigger problem. “There’s no need to make any changes to the system. It’s up to the students to stop abusing a valuable service. It has to be a two-way thing. We’ll do our part, but they have to do theirs.”
Manu Krishnan will spend the summer in Utah, collecting wives. He can be reached at v-krishnan@northwestern.edu. Got something to say about this article? Post it on the NUcomment message board. Back to the top of the article |
