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.