Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson wants the students of UCSD to know that he cares about us. He cares so much, in fact, that he’s working to protect us from the ultimate evil: rides home from off-campus gatherings with Triton Taxi.
As a “student portal” project, which would expand and integrate the online services available to UCSD students, undergoes development, the A.S. Council is presented with the possibility of placing Triton Taxi waivers online. Currently, Triton Taxi stickers and waivers are available from the third floor of Price Center; shifting this process to the Internet seemed like an easy way to encourage students to sign up for the program.
This seemingly benign change to the Triton Taxi service unleashed Watson’s wrath, however, and he’s publicly come out to oppose the entire Triton Taxi service — fretting that an online waiver would encourage “illicit partying” and is “inappropriate and especially inadvisable from the perspective of student safety.”
In becoming preoccupied with policing students’ off-campus activities, Watson forgets that Triton Taxi provides a safe ride home for students on weekends, regardless of their circumstances. In a sprawling city with inadequate public transportation, there are countless reasons why students might need rides back to campus, and the popularity of the Triton Taxi service illustrate this demand.
Travis Silva, former chair of Thurgood Marshall College Student Council, wrote in a April 29 letter to Watson, “The Associated Students … provide Triton Taxi as a resource to UCSD students … Placing the Triton Taxi waiver online will increase visibility of the program, boost program sign-ups and raise general awareness of the limitations of the program. This significant step is vital to improving student safety at UCSD.”
In his replies to the letter, and in subsequent quotes, Watson odiously implies that the Triton Taxi service in general is somehow detrimental to student safety. “I don’t think [Triton Taxi is] a type of activity that should be formally associated with the university’s administrative operations,” he said. Rather than recognizing Triton Taxi’s prevention of drunk-driving incidents, Watson instead wants to dismantle the program entirely. He advocates “a range of programs that would be considerable [sic] more effective than the Triton Taxi program.” In a later e-mail, Watson said, “A more general approach [to ensuring student safety] would be to encourage UCSD students to plan ahead, go out and return in a group, and always have the means for calling a taxi for a ride home.” Watson’s message is clear: Students, don’t rely on your representatives to care about your safety.
In addition, the UCSD Guardian reported on May 13, “As an alternative to Triton Taxi, Watson called for more programs to improve student safety through education” — a trite and empty recommendation to make, and one that disregards the fact that UCSD students have been bombarded by drug and alcohol education programs all their lives.
In a quote that shows just how divorced he is from the realities of college life, Watson said, “[Triton Taxi] is not a safety program. It is a program to facilitate the consumption of alcohol. It is a program that encourages and facilitates students getting into circumstances in which they are not safe.” Watson makes the unfortunate and elementary mistake of confusing the direction of causation. Triton Taxi doesn’t cause alcohol consumption; a wide range of cultural, situational, social and psychological factors do. Rather, Triton Taxi serves a fundamentally different — and fundamentally positive — role: The program mitigates the effects of the inevitable off-campus alcohol consumption of UCSD students by providing an easy and safe alternative to driving home drunk, staying overnight at parties and other unsafe situations.
Fortunately, Watson’s flawed criticism of the program is negated by its sheer popularity and effectiveness in curbing drunk driving. In the spring of 2000, it received a $1,000 award from The Automobile Club of Southern California and the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention for its effectiveness in “[providing] students with an alternative to drinking and driving.” Steven Bloch, the Auto Club’s senior traffic safety researcher, praised Triton Taxi for the “valuable service it provides to students” in the press release announcing the award, going on to say, “We want to encourage more such programs at colleges and universities so that drinking drivers are not on the streets posing a threat to themselves, passengers and other motorists.”
Triton Taxi is arguably the A.S. Council’s most valuable service to students, and we all felt a bit of a sting when its service to the U.S.-Mexico border was ended. While the value of the program stems from inevitable off-campus parties and the sorry state of public transportation in the San Diego area, it also stems from the extremely well-enforced ban on alcohol on campus. Because of the militancy displayed by resident security officers on campus, all sorts of student gatherings — even those that don’t involve a drop of alcohol — are forced to move off-campus. The campus alcohol policy will surely not be relaxed, especially as long as Watson is around, and this rather unfortunate reality simply underscores the need for Triton Taxi.
When he takes it upon himself to try to impact students’ off-campus behavior, Watson is clearly overstepping his bounds. What students do off-campus is their own business, especially when 18-year-old freshmen can enjoy legal drinks in Mexico anytime they please.
Watson can moralize all he wants, but it won’t change student behavior. If he actually wanted to make effective and well-informed decisions, he’d first confront the reality that off-campus drinking by students is an inevitability, especially given the strict regulation of activities on campus. Further, he’d realize that the situation on campus creates a concrete need for a service such as Triton Taxi and that eliminating the program would, very simply, jeopardize student safety.
