Restructured SafeRide starts tonight
By LAURA ROMPF
Assistant News Editor
After months of restructuring, the SafeRide program will be up and running once again this weekend.
In its efforts to reinstate the late-night van service, student government formed an Ad Hoc committee to work on the structural problems with the program.
"The basic problems that the Ad Hoc Committee identified were reliability of the program and accountability of the volunteers to drive," said chief of staff Matt Mamak. "The basic structural change is that the coordinator of the program is going to be paid [David Powers]. He works for both security and student government, but will be paid through security."
Other student workers will receive compensation as well.
"Also, the people driving the vans are also going to be paid," Mamak said. "We believe that this will help to make the program much more accountable than it has been in the past."
Mamak said he hopes that SafeRide will exceed its past numbers and current expectations.
"At its peak in the past, SafeRide was giving anywhere from 50 to 100 rides per night," Mamak said. "I hope that with good publicity, accountability and reliability, we will be able to exceed these numbers."
If SafeRide proves popular, he continued, the program could be expanded after further evaluation.
"I hope that we will have to expand into Thursday night and into more hours," Mamak said. "The O'Donoghue/Norton administration along with the coordinator will evaluate the program after the semester to determine whether or not changes need to be made. I have full confidence that it is going to run very well. The basic goal is to serve as many students as possible."
Mamak said that, overall, he hopes most problems have been solved and that the program will run smoothly.
"I believe that we have addressed as many problems as humanly possible. The rest of the semester will give us a chance to address any further problems that arise," he said.
All News Stories for Friday, March 24, 2000
