Night Owl bus, Safe Ride offer travel options

Passengers headed out to and returning home from weekend festivities frequent the Night Owl bus. 

They climb on the bus, which is often already full of other students who are seemingly intoxicated. 

While students can’t be deterred from going out late at night, drinking or participating in other activities after dark, there are ways that IU has tried to combat the fears of campus at night. 

The Night Owl bus is the first line of safe rides that is available to students. According to its website, the line runs until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and offers service to the A, 6 and 9 Routes through and around campus. 

“The buses provide a safe ride all around campus and to downtown Bloomington on Friday and Saturday nights,” Perry Maull, the operations manager, said. 

The Night Owl service employs students as drivers and managers, and also shares contacts with IUPD for high-risk situations. 

“We now have radios that link to the IUPD line,” Maull said.  “So that they can be reached directly.”

The drivers of the buses have been trained to handle high-risk situations and have different training from the regular drivers. 

All of the drivers have completed the USDOT bus operator program, and are taught by a certified trainer to follow all requirements that are mandated. But the Night Owl drivers even have more training than the rest.

“Night Owl drivers have additional training each summer before school starts on how to handle potential situations,” Maull said. 

The training that the drivers get consists of a presentation from an IUPD detective, and an on-duty operator at all times that helps drivers through problems, said Maull.

Maull said although the Night Owl buses are usually safe, they have had a few problems this year. 

“The only one I can think of is when a group of people got on the bus and started ripping posters down and pulling down the piping and the pull chords,” he said. “But that was the only incident this year, and it was just people behaving badly.”

Maull said often, when there are situations on the bus, its not that the riders are unsafe. It’s that the students are acting unsafely.

He believes that the Night Owl buses do in fact make the campus safer for students at night.

The IU Police Department Officers also take measures to keep students safe on campus at night. 

“We have motor patrol and foot patrol,” said IUPD lieutenant William Munroe.  “We also have patrols around the residence halls, and bike patrol around the residence areas.”

In recent years, according to statistics, crimes have changed, but nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. 

According to statistics available on the IUPD website, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assaults and burglaries are the most common offenses that occur on campus.

Statistics from the IUPD website say that since 2009, sex offenses have dropped from 55 reported cases to 28 reported cases in 2011. 

During that same time period, robberies have increased from 1 reported case to 5. Reported aggravated assaults have gone up from 3 in 2009 to 17 in 2011.   

“Some categories go up, and some go down,” Munroe said.  “Alcohol crimes have always remained at a steady rate though.”

Though IUPD officers are always ready and willing to help said Munroe, students still need to make sure that they’re keeping themselves in mind.

“People need to take responsibility for their own safety,” Munroe said. 

While the campus police and the bus systems help students directly with safety, other campus organizations are drafting plans to make campus safer at night.  

IU Student Association has recently been focusing on student safety at night with pointed initiatives, such as a revamp of the night ride system.

The safe ride system currently has many rules, including no transportation off-campus, no rides for students under the influence, and no transportation for more than two riders at a time, according to the old safe ride website. 

The new safe ride escort system will have a new set of rules. 

“There won’t be stipulations on alcohol use,” Kyle Straub, IUSA student body president, said.  “There still has to be immediate need though. If someone’s hurt, in a bad situation, and can’t find a ride home, that’s when it can be used.”

The new safety rides will only take students home, and the users can be intoxicated, within reason.  These reasons include belligerent actions and vomiting, Straub said. 
“Drivers are allowed to say ‘no,’ if they have justified reason,” Straub said. 

The best thing to do is make sure you’re keeping yourself safe, Straub said. 

 “A lot of times it can be a result of a student being in an unsafe environment,” he said.  “Students put themselves there.  We’re still trying to protect them though.”