The Late Night Bus, also called the “drunk bus” by students, may not renew its contract with St. Bonaventure due to student vandalism of the bus, verbal abuse towards the drivers and smoking.
The bus’ contract expires in two weeks and First Transit, the company the school charters the bus from, has said that if student misbehavior continues, the service will be suspended indefinitely.
The Student Government Association sent out an email Friday, Oct. 19 addressing the issues made clear by the company and expressing the importance of the bus for student and community safety.
SGA made it clear that it is up to the student body to make sure behavior on the bus changes, and that vandalism to the bus is stopped.
“The Late Night Bus is a privilege for St. Bonaventure students and is paid for by the Student Government Association,” said an SGA representative via email. “Therefore, the school does not place a person on the bus to police students. If students continue to abuse their privilege, the bus may be taken away. The purpose of the bus is to keep students safe, and students must be held responsible for their actions in order to protect the entire student body.”
The damages to the bus have been from ripping of cloth on the seats and graffiti, to more serious damages such as breaking windows and doors on the bus.
“The bracket to the back door has been broken multiple times, and Student Government has paid to fix the damage. This is only the most recent incident, as last January, the emergency exit window and door were destroyed causing over $2,000 worth of damage,” said an SGA representative.
The company reached out to Rob DeFazio, the director of the Center for Activities, Recreation and Leadership, regarding student behavior on the bus. It has been made clear that if the bus contract is not renewed then the school will be pressed to find a replacement.
Bonaventure is in a partnership with the city of Olean, Cattaraugus County and the Seneca Nation of Indians to reduce the cost of the bus service. It is shared between ridership and miles driven using a formula to determine the amount of state money given to encourage mass transportation.
“If the service was to be suspended it would up the cost by thousands,” said DeFazio. “There are a couple of things in play here. One, obviously whenever you do something you got to have the funding in place. We have funding to a certain point, we don’t have funding to go do this on our own without the city and everybody else involved.”
DeFazio said if Bonaventure were to lose the contract, then there would be no quick replacement to the bus.
“The other thing too is you have to have a bus company that’s willing to take this on, and then the bus company needs to find someone that is willing to drive a bus Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. transporting our students back and forth,” said DeFazio. “There is not a whole lot of people out there that want to do that.”
DeFazio said that the school fully supports SGA and the Late Night Bus and urges students to change their behavior and if they see other students misbehaving on the bus to tell them to stop.
The main concern of the loss of the bus is the effect it will have on student safety during the weekend.
“As an executive board, we are primarily concerned with the safety of our students.” said an SGA representative. “We would like to keep the bus running and will continue to push for respect on the bus from the student body. At this point, it is the responsibility of our students to take ownership of their actions before First Transit decides they are no longer willing to work with SGA.”
By Brendan O’Leary, News Assignment Editor
olearybm16@bonaventure.edu
