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| 4/15/2009 10:16:00 AM Email this article • Print this article |
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Cornell senior Matt Kohman uses the bus’s public address system to talk to students riding his M.E.S.S. Express bus recently. (Photo by Taryn Thompson) |
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Moving Along
Taryn Thompson
Reporter
Moving every student safely.
That's the goal of a new organization sprouting out of Cornell University. The brainchild of Cornell senior Matt Kochman, M.E.S.S. Express is an all-inclusive transportation service originally offered to area college students, and now available to anyone upon request.
M.E.S.S. Express is also a finalist in Cornell's Big Idea Business Competition, scheduled for Friday, April 17.
It started in October 2008 when Kochman came up with the idea as a response to the drunk driving that can be all too common on and around college campuses. Kochman figured that college students will continue to consume alcohol at will, and that the most effective strategy to compensate ensuing impaired reasoning skills - which is often the predicator of silly choices like hopping behind the wheel after a few too many drinks - is to eliminate the need to drive by offering an alternative.
"The idea was originally founded on a safe ride event type thing, which naturally evolved into creating a proactive, innovative solution for combating drunk driving," Kochman said.
Then it snowballed into Greek Life bus chartering, providing all necessary transportation for sorority and fraternity events.
"It can get crazy when left alone because no one really wants to be responsible for navigating the buses and organizing the resources," Kochman said. "Usually it would be the social chairs who take care of that aspect, but since we've stepped in, they don't have to worry about anything."
Sisters and brothers are free to hand over the reins to Kochman and forget about any transportation organization woes. And the buses are old-fashioned yellow school buses whose seats were built for kids - just enough room for the average-sized person to squeeze in semi-comfortably.
Normally, sororities and fraternities would charter buses by themselves, but it's a phenomenon that has dipped below the city's radar, and Kochman found out that a specific permit is required.
"When I wanted to start up the business, I did some thorough research on permits in the City of Ithaca," Kochman said. "Through that and through talking with the city attorney, I found a law stating that no common carriers are allowed to operate on streets without a permit." According to Kochman, the city had never issued this kind of permit to anyone.
"It has been in the code for 30 years, but it has just never been enforced," he said. "The city told me I needed to apply for the permit, and then they would start enforcing it."
M.E.S.S. Express was granted the first permit of this type in Ithaca's history. This was in December 2008 after a test bar crawl that was funded entirely by personal investment. This initial launching of the M.E.S.S. Express brought campus-ridden Cornell students out of Collegetown and into Downtown - a road less traveled - for a refreshing nightlife scene.
On Friday, April 3, the M.E.S.S. Express ran an official bar crawl, transporting several patrons who found relief from the rain in a big, warm bus.
Kochman plays a watchman supervisor role to keep any rowdiness under control and to make sure communication lines remain open. Kochman has also enlisted the assistance of three other Cornell students to help maintain order. Junior Erica Brophy is an interdisciplinary major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; sophomore Woody Peek is an Applied Economics and Management major; and junior James Idleburg, who serves as the finance director, is also in AEM.
Elissa Osterland, a junior Development Sociology major, took part in the bar crawl and sees the perk in having a system like the M.E.S.S. Express.
"It would definitely be a nice change of pace to have The Commons bar scene as an option, but logistically it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for Cornell students, since the Collegetown bars are within comfortable walking distance," Osterland said.
"Because it's such a short drive, I think many people believe they'll be OK to drive to The Commons and have a few drinks. But the M.E.S.S. Express offers a safe alternative to driving with great incentives," she said.
Those incentives include food and drink specials at participating locations like Micawber's, a neighborhood pub on Aurora Street. Buying a ticket on the M.E.S.S. Express is rewarded not only with ride home, but also with cheap snacks and beverages.
Robin Lamb, owner of Micawber's for the past 27 years, loves the idea.
"Safely transporting students in the later evening to middle of night to visit downtown is good for Ithaca because it spreads commerce," Lamb said. "The frequency of visits would not happen without such because of the risk of drinking and driving."
Lamb said she was recently in Virginia where she saw a 17-seat bus dedicated to transporting anyone who had imbibed too carelessly.
"I thought that was great and started looking for such a thing, and by September, Matt had called," she said.
She also became aware of the fact that 90 percent of Cornell students have never been down the hill to socialize.
"When I looked into the cost of operating a transit system, it was like a second job just to administer or even supervise it," Lamb said. "Matt and I were already on the same page. I anticipated the need and hoped someone would come through."
Kochman is in a better position being a student at Cornell, Lamb said.
"As a businesswoman, I am thrilled. I think this is so overdue," she said. "The M.E.S.S. Express is the key to connecting - as transportation has always been - potential consumers to the development of commerce.
"The City has not adequately done that, and they easily could for a fraction of price," Lamb added. "Kids can't get back up the hill at the end of the night because the bus doesn't run past 12:45 a.m. and there's not even enough room in the bus."
Kochman noted that his company does not simply cater exclusively to students and others who have imbibed in excess, but to everyone and anyone in a compromising situation.
In any case, he's unsure of the sustainability of the bar crawl idea, given that planning and throwing its own events seems to be less of a viable endeavor for M.E.S.S. Express.
"Bus chartering for Greek Life events is operationally profitable," he said. "Working with these student organizations is extremely viable, and we've been turning a profit so far operating very successfully with the Greek system."
Dan Selden, a senior Landscape Architecture major at Cornell, said this might be because of the role the Greek system plays.
"Cornell is a fascinating place socially because it is so far from everything," Selden said. "We kind of depend on our campus to provide social outlets and I think the Greek scene stepped in to fill that void."
In this way, the theory behind providing safe and convenient transportation for college students to fresh new venues on weekend nights should work. "This is where Matt comes in," Selden said.
"It's easy to fall into a rhythm up here in Collegetown, so his idea to bring people to the Commons is a great one because people don't get down there enough," he said, adding that bars are usually packed with Ithaca College students where "its a cool scene to mingle."
That being said, Kochman sees the business moving from supervising more to networking and introducing safe transportation options to all sorts of organizations.
"There are a lot of different groups on campus, like the veterinary school and the law school," Kochman said. "They do happy hours and parties at local bars and usually drive down and have a designated driver."
The important overall goal of his business as advocating social responsibility is trying to fight drunk driving.
"All the methods and things we're doing are secondary to the primary goal," Kochman said.
"In the beginning we were calling ourselves a social advocacy group, but by definition those are not for profit businesses," he added. "There is a new trend in this bad economy where people with for-profit business experience are engaging in social entrepreneurship and using a not-for-profit cause to create a for-profit business."
Kochman wants eventually to organize a prepaid transportation package with his buses and local taxi companies, like Ithaca Dispatch, to incorporate the latter's CabCash program and allow parents and students to purchase passes in advance that would be applicable in both bus and taxi.
This is what M.E.S.S. Express hopes to launch in the fall, but the group is still working out logistics.
"We also want to work with Cornell University in having them send out marketing material directly to parents to sell these packages," Kochman said. "The key is not selling them to students, but to parents who will buy them to invest in their child's safety."
M.E.S.S. Express seems to have found its niche in the industry of advocacy groups against under-aged drinking.
"We recognize that a dangerous subculture has been created by the law that encourages binge drinking," he said. "Statistically from 1984 to now, the number of deaths from drunk driving has decreased, but the number of deaths from binge drinking has dramatically increased."
Kochman thinks this statistical fluctuation can be traced to the legal drinking age. "There is a huge debate now of reducing the drinking age back to 18," he said.
"Over 100 colleges and university presidents have signed a petition to lower it. But that's the aspect that we see as an issue and it's not our place to be in an ethical battle of right versus wrong. I think that lowing the drinking age is an extreme way of dealing with this."
M.E.S.S. Express as an operation neither encourages nor condones underage drinking, he said, and the key issue is upholding the law and combating the subculture.
"The drunk driving statistics have changed because the culture has shifted. It is ingrained in our minds that you don't drive drunk," he said. But in its place is the accepted and often-times expected pre-bar activity of excess drinking.
"Under-aged and binge drinking are problems seen on college campuses all over, and Cornell is certainly no exception," said Osterland.
"We acknowledge there's a problem that needs solutions," he said. "We acknowledge the fact that under-aged drinking does occur on college campuses, and it's not fair to ignore these students. They deserve as much access to a safe ride home as anyone else."
Kochman said he is confident in M.E.S.S. Express and his company's actions and how they'll affect the social scene.
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Suicide has recently come to Ithaca in a very public, and at times controversial, way. This past academic year, after three years with no suicides, Cornell experienced what is known in the scientific community as a "suicide cluster." OK, so maybe you're like me and you thought this whole JetBlue flight attendant story was good for maybe one news cycle.  |
