As of today, students facing the prospect of trudging home through the snow and cold after a night out will instead be able to call a College-sponsored shuttle service for rides across campus. ("Late night shuttle to commence operation," Jan.11). The shuttle is a convenient service that the student body will likely embrace, especially in the winter months. The College's decision to advertise the shuttle as a solution to sexual assault, however, as well as its choice to run the shuttle between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. every night, displays an alarming disconnect between the administration and the student body.
The service's hours of operation are not reflective of the hours when most Dartmouth students engage in risky social behavior many students go out around 11 p.m. and don't return home until 3 or 4 a.m. The disconnect between reality and the administration's perception demonstrates a troubling ignorance of student habits.
More seriously, the inclusion of the shuttle on a list of new policies targeting sexual assault points to either a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem of sexual assault at Dartmouth or dishonesty on the part of the administration. Sexual assault at the College virtually never results from strangers attacking students on Hanover streets the majority of sexual assault cases happen indoors and between acquaintances after alcohol has blurred the lines of consent. Statistics from the 2009 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report are illuminating: Of 23 forcible sexual offenses reported in 2008, 22 occurred in on-campus residential facilities. Only one incident reportedly took place on non-campus property and no attacks were recorded on public property. It is difficult to imagine how a shuttle transporting students between buildings will decrease attacks when the overwhelming majority of sexual assault cases take place indoors.
Do officials at the College honestly believe that this shuttle will do anything to reduce sexual assault? Or is the new shuttle service merely a product of an administration desperate to project the appearance that it is doing something?
Whether the shuttle has come to Dartmouth through sheer administrative ignorance or through a desperate desire to demonstrate tangible action, it is a perfect example of a costly outside solution that is blindly imposed on our campus. Running a late-night shuttle system is common practice and makes perfect sense at more urban schools in such an environment it might actually help reduce assault, sexual or otherwise. On our small, low-crime campus, however, the shuttle will be little more than a drunk bus exploited by students stumbling home at night.
If the administration has a better justification for the shuttle, now is the time to share it. Otherwise, the administration should not feign dedication to eradicating sexual assault by introducing policies that are blatantly inappropriate in the Dartmouth context.
