Observer

Issue date: 10/7/08 Section: Page One

Media Credit: Sheena Quashie , Managing Editor Students getting off weekend grocery shuttle

The Hilton Hotel across the street from Newark Penn Station is an all too familiar place for the countless students that have waited to be picked up from the station by a Rutgers-Newark shuttle.

The entrance of the hotel is the drop off and pick up spot for one of the most utilized routes offered by the department of public safety - the Penn Station route that picks up and drops off students to and from campus.

That shuttle, along with the five others offered by the university, have been praised as well as critcized by students of R-N and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Senior R-N student Kaitlyn Stratowski can't say that her experiences with the Penn Station shuttle, particularly the midnight express which runs daily from midnight to 4 a.m., have been too pleasant. She explains that after spending four years at this university, the services can only be described as "chancy."

"When it's running right, just by calling the right phone number you get Dispatcher Gaines who is the right person to talk to, but if you call the wrong phone number you get chewed out," says Stratowski, a biology and psychology major.

She continues to think back to last year when the shuttle would pick her up from her dorm to take her to the train station, describing the service as "wonderful," but she says this year, it hasn't been the same.

"I'm assuming they were hoping kids forgot about it because now they act as if the service no longer exists," she said.

But according to Jimmy Rivera, the campus safety administrator that manages all civilian departments, which includes transportation services, any student or faculty member from R-N or a neighboring university in the Newark area that feels uncomfortable and requests an escort within campus or near campus will be guaranteed that service.

"We started the midnight express because we realized the demand and the needs of students who come back from somewhere late night from a show or the such, and they need to be picked up. It's also for security reasons," explains Rivera.

If students wish to be picked up outside of any of the scheduled shuttle times, they just have to call extension 5581 or 5582 (with 973-353 preceding all university numbers), and the front desk of the public safety department should answer, according to Rivera.

Continued...

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