Jene Sandridge works while most people sleep. Monday through Friday, from midnight to 7 a.m., Sandridge drives one of the Escort Service vans and transports students from point A to point B. But it's not coffee that has kept this driver running for the past six years. It's the interaction with his passengers.
"I'm a talker and I'm interested in talking to people. I start talking, and eventually the riders will start talking too," Sandridge said.
Conversation is never lacking in Sandridge's van, and on Friday nights, he expects the unexpected.
Before departing on their late-night shifts, Sandridge and his fellow Escort drivers gather in a small, clean office beneath the University Bookstore.
Community Service Officer Harry "Buddy" Durham prepares his staff for an evening on the road. When Durham started working in 1986, a less advanced version of Escort Service was already in place. Today Durham reports a fully-functional transportation system with a 15-passenger main van and 12-passenger satellite van, and a six-passenger van for especially busy nights.
"Ninety-nine percent of my experiences have been good and pleasant," Durham said. "If it continues like this I have no problem. I have wonderful interactions with the students."
But abuses do happen.
Requests for rides from the Treehouse to Cauthen House or Clemons Library to the Lawn slow down the service.
Still, "we pick up everyone that the van is capable of taking," said Shook-Ming So, second-year College student and Escort student coordinator.
Seventeen students take the shotgun seat with the CSOs from the University Police Department. Students work in one of the two vans from either 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. or 10:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. Although this is a paid position at $6.25 per hour, the service sometimes finds itself lacking student support.
Durham, noting the growing trend in service use, encourages more students to take on the responsibility of riding shotgun.
"It's about one of the easiest jobs I can think of; it just requires sitting and writing," Durham said. "The shifts are just four hours and are really not that bad."
"Plus, college students are all night owls anyway," So added.
10:30 p.m.
A relatively empty Escort Service van pulls up in front of Fitzhugh House. Janice, the only female Escort Service driver, navigates the big white ship, and first-year Engineering student Shamuna Mizan rides shotgun, coordinating the pickups and dropoffs.
Mizan starts the evening off with one in a long line of memorable stories.
"A couple weeks ago, there was this one guy who called from Brown College. I asked him where we could find him at Brown, and he told me he'd be in a dumpster," she says. "I about died laughing and could hardly finish the phone call."
Mizan, who joined Escort as a shotgun rider a few weeks before Spring Break, already has experienced the most frustrating aspect of the job.
"One of the main problems we face is time," Mizan says. "We sometimes have people waiting longer than we tell them because one person won't show up and will throw the whole list off schedule."
10:50 p.m.
The overwhelming smell of cologne and cigarettes permeates the already stuffy van as three guys board at Old Dorms.
"This is luxury," one of the boys says as he reclines in the back seat while Janice serenades the passengers with the radio version of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet."
The group of three proudly declare they are not University students.
"We're from JMU, you know," one of the guys says.
Their destination: Delta Sigma Pi fraternity, where they plan to meet up with their non-James Madison University friends.
While there was no major incident with these three young men, Janice recalls a far less savory incident involving three other rogues simultaneously vomiting all over the inside of the van. Janice attributes this to a combination of excessive alcohol consumption and a sometimes-bumpy ride in a moving vehicle.
11:10 p.m.
After picking up six guys at Dunglison House, the van is completely full.
"We're all foreigners," proclaims the most brazen of the boys, pointing to his friends and assigning different nationalities to each of them.
The nationalities change throughout the course of the ride.
The boy lights a match and watches it burn.
"Somebody smoking in here?" Janice asks.
"Naw," each replies.
11:25 p.m.
The van passes by the same three boys from JMU standing at the corner of Main Street and Rugby Road. Obviously lost and nowhere near their destination, the three wave emphatically at the van, but to no avail. Rude gestures on the part of the pedestrians follow.
11:35 p.m.
The van returns to Hereford College, one of the most common pick-up locations because of the residential college's distance from Central Grounds.
A girl in braids jokes with her friend, "Kim, maybe you shouldn't come. The last time you rode Escort with us it took 35 minutes to get to the Corner." The same girl continues to rattle off her evening plans for everyone in the van.
"If we don't find Susie and Megan we have to meet them outside [Delta Tau Delta fraternity] at 12:30," she says.
11:45 p.m.
The van travels along the Corner.
A girl in a cow suit enters Lucky 7. A guy covered from head to toe in soap suds passes by. They are not together.
Other students engage in conversation with a homeless man begging on the corner. The Hereford girls continue to anticipate partying.
"On Friday and Saturday nights this is pretty much a party van," Janice says.
12:15 a.m.
After switching drivers around midnight, the van returns to Hereford to take more girls out.
"Hey, that's pretty cool music," one of the girls says. "It's Old Dirty Bastard. I have got to get this on MP3.
"Hey, I said hey, baby I got your money. Don't you worry," she sings.
Soon the van makes its way over to the Law School to pick up a student studying late at night. The constant flow of calls around Central Grounds makes it difficult to make it out to the less trafficked areas.
"It would help the burden if the buses could extend their hours on the weekends or during finals," Sandridge, the new van driver, says. "We're especially busy then."
Sandridge remembers the old-school days of Escort.
"We used to run Escort Service with no student shotgun so that the drivers had to handle everything. It was very inefficient," he says.
Safety is a top concern for this experienced driver, who comments on the stellar record of the service. Sandridge attributes Escort's success to the serious attitudes the drivers take.
"This is not an access service," Sandridge says. "People think they can get in regardless of their condition, but that's not right. When a person gets into this van, they become my responsibility."
Escort Service drivers avoid picking up drunk or unruly passengers.
2 a.m.
The van takes another trip through the Corner, this time witnessing a fight in the grass between Main Street and the Medical School. About 25 guys are congregated, a policeman's flashlight glaring in their eyes, as three police cars and a paddywagon arrive on the scene.
Third-year College student Ravena James, Escort shotgun, this time enters the van as a passenger. James, like all drivers and shotguns, has her own fond memories of weekend runs.
"One time we picked up a guy and his friends going back to Old Dorms," James says. "We went to U-Heights to drop another passenger off, and the guy going to Old Dorms gets out of the van at U-Heights without saying anything and just starts walking. We just let him go."
A girl on crutches and her friends board at Grady Avenue and Rugby. As the van travels down Rugby, with tons of partiers yelling for a ride, James reveals a philosophy shared by all Escort drivers.
"We try to avoid Beta Bridge like the plague," James says.
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