Safe Ride Bus. Photo by Cline Tours
OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi will have a “safe ride for students” system in place this weekend, with three buses running nightly from several locations to the Oxford Square.
The new bus system will run 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The ride is open only to students, and student IDs must be presented to board.
The program was created to provide safe transportation in the days leading up to UM’s last home football game of the season – Ole Miss takes on the University of Missouri on Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The Office of Health Promotion and members of the Rebel Ride Committee saw the need for a temporary solution to be in place for the game weekend.
“Our committee understands health protection strategies, such as a safe ride program, as a mainstay of campus-based alcohol and other drug abuse prevention,” said Erin Murphy Cromeans, UM assistant director for health promotion. “These programs are intended to protect students from the short-term consequences of alcohol misuse by lessening the risk posed by their behavior. For effective prevention, our decision has to be grounded in environmental harm-reduction management. … We want to remind our students to be safe, be smart and be responsible.”
Though the Rebel Ride program is no more, the new safe ride system will use almost all the same stops the former program used. Those pickup locations are Stockard, Martin and Crosby residence halls, the area between the Phi Tau and Kappa Alpha houses on Fraternity Row and the south side of the Phi Si house facing the School of Law. The new added stop is at University Trails apartments off Old Taylor Road. The pickup and drop-off location near the Square is across from Rebel Bookstore.
The committee is working on more long-term solutions to replace the old Rebel Ride system and will release its recommendations when details have been finalized, Cromeans said.