Off Campus College Transport bus service will continue its usual rounds, but police patrols will increase after a rowdy crowd attacked a bus Downtown last week.
A mob rocked an OCCT bus back and forth, and kicked in its back window at the corner of Court and State Streets on Sunday, March 15, at 3:20 a.m. The driver contacted OCCT training and on-call coordinator James Harrison to report the matter.
“I instructed the driver to pull over as soon as it was safe and contact the police,” Harrison said.
No arrests were made and no charges have been brought, since it was a mob attacking the bus and not just a small group of students. Harrison said that according to police, making charges against anyone would be unfeasible.
The besieged bus is undergoing maintenance for an unspecified monetary sum of damage.
City and campus police patrols will consequently increase after the incident, according to a campus-wide e-mail from David Husch, director of Off Campus College. Video cameras will also be utilized on the buses.
The welfare of OCCT’s drivers and passengers is of the utmost concern, the e-mail said, and any students endangering them will face charges not only from local police, but from the Binghamton University Judicial Affairs office.
“There have been a number of problems like this; it hasn’t been changing,” Husch said. “Sooner or later someone’s going to do that as the bus is going away, and someone’s going to get hurt. We need to take steps to try and alleviate the problem. The best-case scenario is we won’t have any more problems and things will continue as is.”
When asked about the service getting canceled if conditions do not improve, Husch said that option is not being considered.
“That hasn’t been put on the table,” Husch said, “We’re putting a bigger police presence there and hopefully we will be able to deal with these individuals. Not only are we dealing with students trying to get back and forth, but on campus some students are trying to get home late at night; it’s not fair to them to cancel service.”
Matt Landau, president of the Student Association as well as OCCT, held a board meeting last week on the subject.
“We decided to continue service,” Landau said. “We’ve asked the University to contact University police as well as city police, just for the precaution of having extra people around.”