With all the money spent on low-attendance events on our campus, there is still a greater need to keep the student body safe. A parent’s worst nightmare is to receive a phone call on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night about their child being rushed to the hospital. Although they make a valiant effort encouraging our fellow classmates to stay on campus and not go out to drink, they can’t control everyone.
The college life, as shown by the media, is that of constant partying in between classes. It’s every freshman’s expectation that they are going to party hop on their first weekend of school. The CCSU police department has done a remarkable job in limiting this activity and essentially grinding this practice to a halt in the apartments and homes surrounding our campus. While this has certainly cut down on the noise complaints, underage drinking and droves of drunk party-goers marching back from these houses, it has spawned another issue.
If you take something away from someone at this age, they are going to want to get it back. It’s human nature to operate on vengeance. An underage student in search of a party has only a few remaining options and the best one: to get in a car and drive to a Hartford bar or club. They have no choice but to buy or borrow a fake or real ID and try their best to get past the bouncers at the doors.
Not only is this illegal, but it also puts young adults in a very dangerous predicament. If they’ve spent money at the bar, how many of them will actually want to go ahead and spend the money to get a cab ride back to campus? Not many students have the cash to actually do this; causing them to drive home. Now you have an underage person trying to drive, putting their life and the lives of others at risk.
State and local police are always on the lookout for drunk drivers, but they can’t catch everyone. Most people will never get caught when they drive drunk. Unfortunately, the next time anyone drives home intoxicated could be their last time driving at all. It’s time for the university to get involved and take this dynamic out of the equation.
There’s nothing that our campus can do to keep a student here and prevent them from going to a bar or club, but they can help keep our streets and highways safe for others on the road. It’s time that the school provided free shuttles to downtown Hartford. While it might be seen as a promotion of illegal activity, the school can’t turn a blind eye for much longer. Our leaders at this institution are naive if they think that no one is doing this or, if they do acknowledge this, that they can stop it by having C.A.N. host Devil’s Den events.
And even though many CCSU students are commuters, there are plenty living off-campus in the area that could take advantage of the service. In fact, the shuttle could help bring more people to downtown Hartford to do more than go to the bars. Right now, the city can take any boost it can get. Making it easier for students to get downtown is an advantage in and of itself.
With hundreds of thousands of dollars in Student Government’s budget, they must be able to find enough funds to provide a small shuttle service to Hartford. If they are worried about what image this might portray, have the buses drop students off at clubs that are 18+. It might cost the university some money, but no dollar amount can replace the price of a student’s life.