RamRide Really Rocks
Heroes of the Week:
The Associated Students of CSU. As of tomorrow night, no CSU
student will have an excuse to drive drunk on the weekends.
Tomorrow night RamRide becomes a reality. A program sponsored by
ASCSU, the university and private vendors, RamRide will offer free,
safe and sober rides home to CSU students on Friday and Saturday
nights.
How does the service work? On Friday and Saturday between 10
p.m. and 3 a.m., you can call 491-3333, give the operator your
name, student ID number and location, and a vehicle will come pick
you up and take you home. Free. No questions asked. Sweet.
The program will be, aside from one paid position, staffed
entirely by volunteers. Each of the vehicles operating per night
will need two volunteers, one male and one female. Volunteers will
also be needed to answer phones and dispatch vehicles. For the
program to be successful, people need to volunteer. If you are
interested, apply online at the ASCSU Web site,
ascsu.colostate.edu, or stop by the ASCSU office.
Ten vehicles will be in operation every night, according to Ben
Goldstein, ASCSU director of student services. The vehicles can
take you anywhere in Fort Collins, as long as that anywhere is
home. After some good guesstimating, Ben and I figured the program
could handle somewhere between 60 to 70 calls an hour. This means
over 200 free, safe and sober rides will be available after
midnight both Friday and Saturday to any student who calls.
So put 491-3333 into your phone right now and give the program a
try this weekend; not only will you be doing yourself and your
community a favor by not driving drunk, but your patronage will
help to ensure the success of a program that could be the best
supplement to safe partying since the invention of the condom.
From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank everyone in
ASCSU who helped to put this program together. Even after the
election festivities of last spring I still don’t think most of you
have any idea of how important it was and still is to me to see a
program like this established at CSU. I wasn’t given the
opportunity to craft it, but you guys were, and you are doing a
fine job. Congratulations.
Zero of the Week: Mr. And Mrs. Robert Schindler, their son
Robert Jr., Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature. On Tuesday those
infallible practitioners of democracy in Florida outdid themselves:
Jeb and the good ol’ boys down at the capital building made a new
law that will keep the body of a woman named Terri Schiavo alive.
The good governor is trying to help the woman’s parents, who still
maintain hope that their daughter is alive and might recover. The
woman’s husband, Michael, maintains that even if she is alive and
unable to respond, she would not want to live in that state.
For me, the most upsetting part of this story is neither the
woman nor the omnipotent righteousness of the Florida state
government. What appalls me are the actions and attitudes of her
parents and brother; by refusing to let go of a daughter and sister
that may or may not be conscious, they are either prolonging the
suffering of someone they love or holding onto the shell of a
person who died years ago. Either way, they are not doing the
person they love a favor.
I would be behind Mrs. Schiavo’s parents and brother 100 percent
if she had only been in her current state for a year, maybe even a
couple of years. It has been 10 years. She isn’t coming back. Her
family needs to let go.
At the insistence of the family, the governor and the Florida
legislature passed a law to put a feeding tube back into Mrs.
Schiavo, who hadn’t eaten in six days and was nearly dead. The law
granted Gov. Bush the power to issue an executive order overriding
a court decision to remove the feeding tube for 15 days. The law
also states “The court has found that patient to be in a consistent
vegetative state.” This means the government is admitting to her
comatose condition and is still bringing her body back from the
brink of mortal death. So hasty was the bill’s passage that even
those who supported it were unsure of what they had done: Florida
Senate President Jim King is quoted in the Denver Post as saying,
“I keep thinking, ‘what if Terri didn’t really want this done at
all?’ May God have mercy on all of us.”
Let it be public knowledge: If for some reason I suffer an
injury that leaves me brain damaged and in need of machines and
feeding tubes to live, please let me die. May God have mercy on the
Schindler family and the Florida Legislature.
Joe is a senior majoring in history. He was an ASCSU vice
president candidate last year and applied to be a director this
year. His column runs every Thursday.
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