DrunkBus, inc.

The Furman shuttle - more commonly called the "Drunk Bus" - is the single most woefully inefficient thing I've ever been a part of. The beautiful thing is that everyone is to blame. For the sake of efficiency, I've chosen to list what I see as the main problems. 1. None of the riders understand the concept of a line: more specifically, no one understands the fact that being below someone on a list is the same thing as being behind someone in line. The wonderful thing about a list is that you can't cut it. And I imagine that the same people telling me through a phone that it's "[bullcrap]" that I can't bump them up the line because they've been "forced to wait" at an upscale bar downtown "for freaking, like, hours dude" are the same people who have no qualms cutting in line in the DH. So therein, I guess, lies the one positive of the Drunk Bus: it is jerk proof. Or at least until they get on the bus. But more on that to follow.

2. The fact that the Drunk Bus operates by a list system is neither well known or publicized. The reason people react so strongly to being given a wait-time before the bus reaches them is that they call with the expectation that they will be picked up instantaneously. Since students wanting to be picked up by the Drunk Bus are, more often than not, drunk, they tend to react to a 40-minute wait in a manner that is less than tactful or mature.

3. Often, once students board the bus, they imagine that they own it. Of course this is not the case - but this is no matter to the students who respond with, "we'll cram," and angry glares to being told that their group will push the number of passengers over the legal limit.

4. Students fail to recognize that the Drunk Bus owes them nothing. It is driven by people who, in order to drive drunkards around, have foregone their own right to drink on a weekend night. So your position - as a tipsy guy in loafers sitting on the floor of a bus, asking the driver to break the law so you don't have to call a cab - is not a position of authority. I don't care how hard you can cross your arms (or whose birthday it is).

5. The whole van fits only a few more people than my car. Granted, I drive a big car, but it is worth noting that the Drunk Bus is neither spacious, current, nor even a van (much less a bus). It's a satire of a van. It's like something that was built to make fun of vans. None of this concerns Furman officials, who, when it was acquired, were too busy, say, building a completely self-sustaining swing set to appear on the cover of "Park Equipment Monthly."

Now that I have identified the problems, allow me to offer a solution: dispatch two "vans" at a time. I know we have two because another sits - unused - next to the Drunk Bus. One bus would take calls, but only from frat/baseball house comers and goers. And the other would be a shuttle that goes to and from downtown, operating on a regular - publicized - schedule. (The bus will be here at this time; first come, first serve; etc.)

This solution was offered by a passenger who was so incredibly, amazingly drunk that he couldn't remember where he lived at first. That drunk, and he came up with a better system than what we have now.