How many of you have walked home at 2 a.m. in freezing weather? Missed the last bus to Summit on Juniper and found yourself without a place to sleep? Woken up with the flu or some other mystery illness and needed a ride to Dick’s House — yet opting, without a car, to trek 15 minutes through the snow with tissues and cough drops falling from your pockets?
We imagine most Dartmouth students can relate to at least one of these scenarios. Dartmouth is unique for so many reasons, but our school’s remote location and harsh winter weather stand out as two of the College’s most defining features. While our geography and climate make for memorable traditions and exciting outdoor activities, they also introduce challenges. One of the most glaring, this Editorial Board argues, is a lack of accessible and reliable transportation.
For both the safety and convenience of students, Dartmouth should introduce a ride-booking system on campus.
While we’d love to see better transportation year-round, we understand that change can be slow to realize. We therefore choose to focus predominantly on the winter term — when Hanover’s lack of viable transportation options proves most detrimental. In the lead-up to notable cold snaps, Dartmouth often sends students cold weather alert emails with tips for staying warm and reminders to “socialize responsibly.” We’re glad the College recognizes that cold temperatures pose a danger to student health, but emails are not enough. “Socializ[ing] responsibly,” as these emails urge students to do, requires getting home safely. And, in many cases, getting home safely requires a car.
To understand why better transportation is so necessary — particularly during Hanover’s cold winter months — we must consider several features of Dartmouth’s social scene. First, attire. Head to Webster Avenue on a Friday night and try to find 10 students wearing actual winter coats. We think you’ll have a hard time. Given the general grime of Greek spaces and persistent risk of theft, most students opt to wear “frackets” — or low-quality jackets — when going out. Often flimsy and poorly lined, these fraternity jackets hardly keep students warm when temperatures dip below zero. According to the National Weather Service, frostbite can set in in as little as 10 minutes at -5 degrees Fahrenheit if winds are strong enough. The walk from Webster Avenue to some campus housing can be nearly twice as long.
We also have to talk about alcohol consumption. It’s no secret that alcohol is a fact of life on campus. In fact, some have even argued that drinking is “the only option for socializing” at Dartmouth. In turn, many of the near coatless students walking home are, to make the situation even more dangerous, intoxicated. To be sure, we worry about students wandering home drunk in any season — not just winter. But the problem is greatly exacerbated when snow and ice line the streets. What if someone slips on ice and can’t get up? What if they lie down in a snowbank and fall asleep? Particularly late at night, when there are few bystanders around, these students may be imperiled without anyone to help. These situations may be the worst-case scenarios, but they aren’t beyond the realm of possibility. The administration shouldn’t wait for a tragedy to take action.
Finally, we believe late-night transportation would help prevent gender-based violence on campus and support survivors. Particularly in the winter, we have concerns that a student might stay somewhere that causes them discomfort due to cold weather. Gender-based violence prevention groups on campus have made a similar point, arguing that SafeRide vehicular transportation — a discontinued Safety and Security program that offered free rides to students on campus — would empower students to leave spaces in which they feel unsafe. Any on-demand ride-booking system would likely have a similar effect. Alternatively, someone in an unsafe situation may feel forced to walk home alone in the cold, risking their physical well-being to avoid potentially dangerous situations.
Currently, Safety and Security offers 24-hour “medical transports for sudden illness or injury only” to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, according to their website. However, when gender-based violence occurs, students may need transportation to DHMC for SANE exams. They may not have access to a car and, if they do, may feel uncomfortable driving themselves or asking a friend. It doesn’t surprise us that the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault — an advocacy group that aims to address sexual assault and alcohol-related harm on campus — has thus advocated for the reimplementation of SafeRides on campus since at least 2020.
We’ve focused primarily on Dartmouth’s late-night social scene, but there are countless other reasons someone might need access to an on-demand car service — from non-emergent injuries to missing the last bus. In 2021, for example, one student told The Dartmouth she had been denied two rides by Safety and Security the day after “severely” injuring her ankle. When these situations arise, Dartmouth students are often out of luck. While Dartmouth has the Campus Connector, the system has notable faults. Not only are its stops limited, but we also cannot expect students to learn how to use the bus late at night, or wait at bus stops in freezing temperatures — especially if they are intoxicated. The Connector bus also only runs every 30 minutes on Fridays after 4 p.m. and on Saturdays after 9 a.m. and stops service on both days at 2:45 a.m. To address these shortcomings, Dartmouth can, and should, make ride booking available to students.
In fact, a form of this service used to exist on campus through the aforementioned SafeRide program. Any student could call Safety and Security to request a free ride from one part of campus to another. The program was discontinued in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite many students hoping for its return, the College declined to reinstate the program — with Safety and Security director Keysi Montás stating that the program was being used as a “24-hour taxi service.” The excessive use of SafeRides should not be a reason to leave the program dormant, but rather one of the most compelling reasons to expand it — or implement some other on-demand ride program on campus. While Montás argued that transportation requests related to inclement weather don’t fall within Safety and Security’s purview, we cannot absolve Dartmouth at large of responsibility. It is precisely the College’s responsibility to ensure that students are able to travel safely around campus — and it is critical that Dartmouth makes every effort to prevent students from engaging in behavior that poses serious risks to their health and wellness.
Other colleges, evidently agreeing with our argument, have found various ways to ensure that students are brought safely and directly back to their homes at night. The University of Chicago offers its students unlimited free rides from 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. within a specific service area under a rideshare service called Via. For a period of three months in 2018 — in response to carjackings and robberies — Washington University in St. Louis partnered with Uber to provide free rides to students from select areas. The program allowed for up to two free rides a day amounting to up to $20. Perhaps most directly applicable to Dartmouth — which doesn’t have meaningful access to Uber or Lyft — McGill University operates a student-run program that has student volunteers respond to ride requests filled out manually or made by phone to a dispatch number. If Dartmouth doesn’t want to reinstate SafeRides, it, too, could create a student-run program — perhaps one where paid student drivers transport their peers in either personal or College-owned vehicles.
There will always be students out and drinking, no matter how cold the weather. There will be others with non-emergent injuries in need of assistance. Instead of ignoring these realities, the College should take proactive steps to ensure the safety of its student body. Unfortunately, it may be only a matter of time before this facet of Dartmouth life becomes dangerous or even deadly for students. We have said it before, and we’ll say it again: Dartmouth, don’t wait for a tragedy to act.
The Editorial Board consists of opinion staff columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.
