Cougar Safe Rides, a free ridesharing service ran by the Women*s Center, is facing staffing issues and will remained paused until a larger department can take over.
A review conducted last year determined that Cougar Safe Rides is too large of a service to be operated by the Women*s Center and pointed to staffing issues as the main problem.
“[The review] really spoke to how [Cougar Safe Rides is] a system that really shouldn’t be living in the Women*s Center,” said Amy Sharp, director of the Women*s Center. “It’s currently just me right now.”
Sharp said that a larger department should take over the service. This may be a challenge as other departments don’t have enough resources and will have to take liability should anything happen.
“What’s hard right now is that all of our systems right now are so stretched thin that there wasn’t really any other department that was ready to take [it] on,” Sharp said. “It’s a liability, and that’s something that a department has to really think about if they want to take that on.”
Sharp also said that there has been an issue with getting volunteers.
“We have four cars, we had at, one point, maybe three really active Cougar Safe Ride program leaders but then we had no volunteers, and really the program runs on volunteers,” she said. “I think it’s really a lot asking for nights and evenings especially over a Thursday, Friday, Saturday.”
WSU and the City of Pullman need to address transportation demands, Sharp said.
“I think there’s probably a greater need for the City of Pullman and WSU to figure out transportation needs,” she said. “I think it’s a larger problem, I think a call to the mayor isn’t gonna do much, he really needs kind of a plan of action.”
Eva Sheffler, a senior resident advisor, said losing Cougar Safe Rides is a blow to WSU.
“It’s a very rough look for WSU, especially with the last couple instances with the murders in the last two years,” she said. “Campus safety is a big deal and Cougar Safe Rides is integral to providing students with this feeling of protection.”
Cougar Safe Rides was created in 1977 and funded by the Services and Activities Fee.
