The Center for Social Justice has received complaints about changes made to its van-lending policies enforced at the beginning of last semester. Service fraternity Alphi Phi Omega members filed an appeal to the center in December after what they believed was an unfair suspension of their van rights.
In response to concerns about student and community safety from previous years, the center made several changes to its van-lending policies at the beginning of the fall semester. According to CSJ Van Committee chair Jeffrey Lawson, the changes made to the policies resulted in a more uniform procedure and a decrease in the amount of control that students are given in the proceedings.
Adam Doverspike (SFS ‘03), coordinator of APO’s van escort service, said that it was unfair that the changes in the van-lending policies were made without any input from students.
“No students are on the van committee, and the policy did not get approved by the VPS advisory board,” Doverspike said. “It’s a safety concern for students who live outside of the SafeRides area … They’re jumping in so quickly, and they didn’t take campus safety into consideration.”
Doverspike said that the APO van escort service was involved in two accidents last semester, the second of which occurred at 10 p.m. Nov. 30. Since APO did not report the accident until the following morning, Doverspike said that the Center told them that they had violated a new center policy that requires students to report accidents immediately.
“It is very unfortunate that the van committee placed enforcing minor rules about the time span to report a fender-bender above safe transport for approximately 200 students over the month of December,” he said.
Doverspike, who was the driver during both of the accidents, said that after he went to pick up the van key on Dec. 1, Lawson reported APO to the Office of Student Conduct for unauthorized van use.
The Center’s van committee decision on the incident included the suspension of Doverspike’s van use, the revoking of his driver certification card until re-certification and a letterfrom APO explaining their situation to all VPS organizations.
Doverspike said that APO requested that the suspension of its van rights be postponed until January due to the large volume of students who use the escort service during final exams. A brief reprieve of the service’s van suspension was granted until Dec. 20 by the center.
APO filed an appeal of the decision to Kathleen Maas Weigert, director of the Center for Social Justice. Weigert overturned the appeal, stating in her decision that APO’s appeal had a “heavy reliance upon the literal written text of the van usage policies with not much understanding of the spirit, purpose or intent of the policies.”
Doverspike said that Weigert did not ever speak directly to APO members before overturning their appeal.
Due to exams, Doverspike said that APO members were unable to complete the letters and report before the end of last semester.
Lawson said that the center disagrees that students do not have sufficient opportunity to voice their concerns about the van policies. He said that all of the students who raised concerns are members of the VPS advisory board.
Lawson added that every van coordinator at the Center is also a University student. “We do want student voices,” he said.
An in-house committee composed of the heads of several organizations sponsored by the center and designed to address van policy issues was set up in the fall. Student complaints about the van-lending policies can be voiced before the committee, with the committee holding the power to issue sanctions for damage to or misuse of the vans.
Beginning this past fall, students are now required to complete a two-day driver certification process in order to drive one of the center’s 19 vans. At the completion of this process, which replaced the former one-day certification course, the student receives a driver certification card.
“[The new process] is more complicated and more thorough,” Lawson said. “We were concerned with minimizing risk and maximizing the safety for those who come in contact with the Georgetown vans.”
Since the change requiring van accidents to be reported immediately to the center, Lawson said that there had been little damage made to the vans since the beginning of the school year, and only a few accidents reported.
In response to complaints about van damages from previous years, Lawson said that the center got rid of all of its vans that it felt were beyond repair during the Fall. Repairs were made to all other vans.
“We did anything to make them safer for students who want to put the key in the ignition and be safe,” he said. “Generally there have been no problems. Generally people don’t complain about the policy,” Lawson said.
