
DATE: Saturday, March 22, 1997              TAG: 9703220317

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  114 lines

ODU OFFERS FREE RIDES FOR SAFETY THE SHUTTLE SERVICE IS PART OF AN EFFORT TO PROTECT STUDENTS ON AND NEAR CAMPUS.

Sharifa Charlery and two friends left Powhatan Hall at Old Dominion University at 10:30 p.m. on a recent Thursday and climbed into the back seat of a waiting car.

Their destination: Rogers Hall, across campus, to visit friends.

Seconds after they were dropped off, they returned to the car. No one was home. So they returned to their rooms - after another unsuccessful stop at the Tinee Giant on Powhatan Avenue, which was closed.

The driver, who patiently obliged his passengers throughout the trip, was no cabbie. He was Phillip Coston, one of ODU's security officers.

And the ride cost the students nothing.

They were taking advantage of the university's new ``courtesy car'' service.

The service is designed to shuttle students around the campus and its surroundings late at night - whether they're heading for the library or from a bar.

The service, started last month, provides free rides to students from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Thursdays to Sundays. It blends the growing efforts on campuses nationwide to provide students with more amenities - and protect them from crime.

The program is relatively rare on Virginia campuses. Although ODU has billed itself as the only state college with such a program, at least one other state school, the University of Virginia, provides a similar service seven nights a week.

The director of ODU's police force, William ``Cliff'' Rice, said, ``We thought maybe we could help them out on those nights where there is a lot of activity in the university. It provides them the service that I think they deserve, to get back and forth safely and late at night, so they feel comfortable.''

ODU's president, James V. Koch, said many crimes involving college students are ``alcohol-related. This will help people out who frequent certain establishments and sometimes after frequenting those establishments don't make the best judgments.

``Wherever they are,'' he said, ``there is a ride for them, whether they are coming out of the library or the 4400 Club,'' a Hampton Boulevard bar.

Riders offer the service rave reviews. ``A lot of students walk around this campus at night,'' said Charlery, 18, a sophomore who said she has used the car at least seven times. ``It's a lot safer to call this car.''

James Custis Jr., a 22-year-old senior who used the car the same night to go from Rogers to Powhatan halls, said: ``It's the safest thing that can happen. You don't have to worry about getting robbed. I wish it was seven days a week.''

Peggy E. LaLonde, a sergeant on ODU's police force, said the car service is an extension of escort services, now offered at many colleges, in which students accompany their peers walking across campus after dark.

``It's just a little bit more convenient and little bit faster,'' she said.

The ODU courtesy car is hard to miss.

The blue Chevrolet Caprice, bought from the State Police for $4,500, has a big sticker on the driver's door identifying it as the ``ODU Courtesy Car'' and listing the number to call for service: 683-3477. There is also a triangular signboard atop the car with a similar message. Coston said the car is occasionally mistaken for a pizza delivery car.

The service area is not limited to the campus. It runs from the Elizabeth to the Lafayette rivers and from 38th Street to Magnolia Avenue.

So far, Rice said, 20 to 25 students have used the car weekly. The heaviest times are after 10:30. Students have been picked up at the library, bars, convenience stores, dorms. Sometimes they make stops on the way home: Coston waited for Custis while he got money from an automated teller machine on 49th Street.

ODU reported a 25 percent increase in criminal incidents - the largest jump for any four-year Virginia college - in the most recently collected statistics. The number went from 317 in 1994 to 397 in 1995.

Nearly 90 percent of those incidents were larcenies - thefts of property, such as a bike or backpack. But at least two Old Dominion students, John Torpey and Sarah Wisnosky, have been killed near campus in the last five years. And last year's student president, Chris Pearson, was shot in the neck in 1993 at an automated teller machine near the university.

Rice won't guarantee that the car will cut down on crime, but he's hoping for the best: ``If it does, we'll take it as a blessing. If, in fact, somebody gets in that car instead of getting hurt in the street, the car did more than we thought it could.''

U.Va. has offered a pickup service for at least 10 years, said Kirsten Curtis, community resource coordinator for the campus police. A van is available from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. to take students anywhere within a mile of the Rotunda, a central campus landmark.

``We want to make sure that everyone has a safe ride home,'' Curtis said. ``We know students are going to be staying out late.''

But the campus paper, the Cavalier Daily, reported last month that some students were unhappy with the service, saying the van didn't respond promptly and the driver sometimes bypassed drunken students.

At ODU, security officers say they don't mind picking up people at bars or driving them to convenience stores. And they don't give the bar goers lectures or breath tests. The only requirement is that they display student ID.

``Student safety is what it's about,'' said Phillip Scott, another security officer who sometimes drives the car.

``They're here to learn, not to get messed with.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

GARY C. KNAPP

ODU students are offered free rides around campus from 8 p.m. to 3

a.m. Thursdays to Sundays. The service blends growing efforts on

campuses to provide students with more amenities and protect them

from crime.

RIDES

Free rides are offered from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Thursdays to Sundays.

ODU students can call 683-3477.

GARY C. KNAPP

ODU students Shanna Driver, right, Gina Brown, center, and Carissa