A third van appeared and I was again too slow to get in the van before it was filled to capacity. I hadn’t been this disappointed since Constantine was voted off “American Idol.”

Tuition is always being raised — it seems to be a fact of life. At the beginning of each year, my tuition bill is higher than the last. The problem with this is that while I am paying more to be in college, the services that I am offered as a student keep getting cut down more and more.

Take, for instance, BOSS. I love that we have a service on campus that promotes students getting from place A to place B safely, but since it has suffered significantly from budget cuts, trying to catch a ride on BOSS has become a nightmare.

The other night, after realizing I was too late to get my new UPass, I figured I could get a ride with BOSS. It was dark and cold out and I did not want to walk home alone. I waited. One van pulled up but unfortunately it was headed in the other direction.

Fine, I figured, another van will be on its way. Another van came and people literally ran up to the van. I was cut off by a horde of people scrambling to get in. At this point I had been waiting for 45 minutes and should have just sucked it up and walked home.

A third van appeared and I was again too slow to get in the van before it was filled to capacity. I hadn’t been this disappointed since Constantine was voted off “American Idol.”

So I was upset. I had been waiting an hour, I’d been turned away from three vans and all I wanted to do was go home. This has nothing to do with BOSS itself, considering it gives about 20,000 rides a month to us students. And now because its budget was slashed, it is scrambling to be able to accommodate the demand.

Here we have this great service offered by our university to make sure that we as students are able to get home safely, whether we are coming from campus or a house party or a bar, but it’s turning out to be virtually impossible to catch a ride with BOSS.

BOSS had to cut down its hours and advertising. We need BOSS to continue to operate because of how valuable a program it is for students’ safety. I understand that it costs a lot of money for BOSS to remain in business, between $20,000 and $25,000 a month, but do we really need to put students in situations that are unsafe?

Especially freshmen, most of who do not have cars and walk to house party’s near campus. Let’s get them home safely and quietly with BOSS instead of them being loud and obnoxious as they walk home, or even worse, someone deciding to drive drunk.

BOSS needs funding; it needs to be able to run effectively and efficiently. It needs to be able to continue to get students home safely.

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