3,
vVednesday • December 3, 1997
Lifestyles
one of the
more thankless
jobs on campus,
bus drivers
put up with
broken-down
buses, Bryan-
College Station
traffic and the
occasional
psychotic rider.
>
9?
Od
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oo
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By Stephen Wells
Staff writer
I very day, the students of Texas A&M
depend on the actions of people they
fbarely notice. The janitors keep our
yam pus clean. PTTS ensures every car is in
»roper place. And the student bus drivers
(ielp students make their classes on time.
jThe Texas A&M Bus Operations is one of
Te largest student employers on campus.
Niach semester, 350 students find work dri-
^ ring 65 buses.
iTrevor Hull, training coordinator for Bus
^lerations, explained the hiring process.
«“Basically, we go through a pretty thor-
ou Ji and professional committee inter
view process,” Hull said. “This semester, we
lad 160 applicants for 80 open positions, so
we usually look at hiring half of the appli-
Tnts. The application process is really good
practice for the real world.”
Several requirements are made for ap
plicants to promote safety in the student
lassing system.
I “It’s required that applicants have a Class
1 commercial permit before they start
Pfaining,” Hull said. “We also have our own
purses on defensive driving and driving
fopi Avery Schaeffer, a
senior Community Health
fmajor, has been driving buses
for two years.
Right! Kami Rapp, a junior
animal science major, drives
an on-campus route
[Tuesday afternoon.
Photography by Rony Angkriwan
safety. The students spend about as much
time in a [training] lecture as they do dri
ving, and they are tested on eveiy part of the
class. We take them out to Riverside cam
pus to begin practice driving, then move up
to neighborhood driving and night driving.”
Jamie Wilson, a bus driver and junior
molecular biology major, said the training
is not hard work.
“They just take you out and tell you to dri
ve,” Wilson said. “It’s really not that difficult.
You get to run a slalom course forward and
backward, and in one of the practice drives,
they make you slam on the brakes and jack
knife a bus, which gets fun. The only bad part
was that training took place over the Christ
mas holiday which was a pain.”
Bus Operations is completely run by stu
dents except for two full-time positions:
charter coordinator and manager.
“It’s quite a challenge being responsible
for that many people,” Hull said. “But I think
our system works out best for the students.”
The student bus drivers work 12 hours a
week, working three, four hour shifts a
week. The schedules are during class hours,
so sometimes driving a bus gets in the way
of classes.
“You have to work 12 hours a week,” Wil
son said. “Sometimes it gets really tedious.
You just drive around for four hours, and the
radio is your only entertainment if nobody
talks to you.
“Your shifts are supposed to work around
your schedule, but sometimes they don’t. For
example, I take a lot of classes that are offered
at only one time, and I found scheduling to
be a big hassle.”
Beth Focht, a junior journalism major,
said working as a bus driver is no different
than working at any other job and demands
the same sacrifices.
“I could work at Target and have to work
all night after class,” Focht said. “It’s always
hard to work around a student’s schedule,
but if you like to drive and can get used to
the traffic around College Station, this job is
easier than working at a department store.”
Student bus drivers do not need to worry
about a boss lurking over them all the time.
“There’s nobody looking over your shoul
der,” Focht said. “It’s really a trust thing. We
only get evaluated once a semester.”
Some bus drivers who drive the same
route for a long time get to know their pas
sengers better.
“Most people just talk to you when they
want their stop,” Focht said. “But there are
a few people that I see a lot. I drive the Oak
shuttle, and it’s a small bus that you can talk
to people in. So we ask each other how we’re
doing and how school is going. Once I
walked into a bank, and one of my passen
gers started pointing me out to his friends
as his bus driver.”
In keeping with Murphy’s Law as it ap
plies to a college student’s life, bus drivers
get their share of tough days.
“My crazy days are always when my bus
decides to break down,” Focht said. “Or
when you hear all these people asking
about Wehner and pronouncing it wrong.
Once I got stuck at Fish Pond. Our buses
have a sensor that locks the parking brake
when the air brakes reach a certain pres
sure. My bus did that, and I just sat there at
Fish Pond for a while.”
Sometimes life as a bus driver can deliv
er some surreal exchanges with passengers.
“Last year, I had a guy ask me what I
would do if somebody walked on the bus,
put a gun to my head and told me where to
drive,” Wilson said. “Of course, this is late at
night and he’s the only one who is on the
bus with me. That was no fun.”
Although it is socially acceptable to com
plain about the bus system, Texas A&M is
doing well when compared to other public
transit systems.
“We had an opportunity to work at the
[Atlanta Summer] Olympics last year,” Hull
said. “We brought about 30 or 40 drivers, and
they were very impressed with the job we
did. Other people kept coming up to us ask
ing how we ran our buses. It’s nice to know
we’ve set up such a successful system.”
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