A day in the life of a drunk-bus driver

It’s hardly full, but still the noise of seven riders fills the bus. Three rows back on the right, a tan, slightly built passenger in a plaid shirt beats the window with his fist. His deadpan face conveys his alcohol-induced absence. The beats continue rattling the window with each thump. It becomes too much and Chandler Bryant glares through his revision mirror at the aspiring percussionist. “Hey! Chill it back there, man!” The racket stops.

It’s 1.01 a.m., but the night’s still young for Bryant, an East Carolina University Pirate Express driver. It’s Friday and his second consecutive night driving students from various apartment complexes to downtown and back. Tonight is Route 908 to The Bellamy, last night Route 907 to Copper Beech.

“I don’t mind the drunk bus so much. There’s always something going on,” Bryant says passing hand over hand to turn the large black wheel in front of him. “I mean, there’s the people riding the bus and the other cars on the road.”

Bryant, a senior criminal justice major, is one of many students employed by the ECU Student Transit Authority to transport students between campus and Greenville, but one of few daring enough to drive nights.

The Pirate Express service began in Fall 2005 as an extension of ECU Transit’s Safe Ride service to cater to students living off-campus. ECU Director of Transit, Wood Davidson, recalls the alarming stories of assaults and robberies of students returning to their cars downtown as what sparked the conversation about a night bus service. However, he says the transit department was limited by funds. “We didn’t feel like it was something we should charge for or increase student fees to pay for,” Davidson explains. “It wasn’t academic, but it certainly had a core safety function.”

The service began after daytime service partnerships grew.  Apartment complexes receiving the Pirate Express service cover the operating costs, while ECU student fees cover capital costs. “We’re using buses that, at that time of night, would typically just be parked in the yard,” Davidson explains. On any given Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, 12 buses are in operation.

As the night matures, Bryant sees his passengers’ state of mind change. Passengers fill the buses heading downtown from 11 p.m., but the first of the drunken passengers start to file back on bus from the downtown hub after little more than an hour.

A few miles down the road after Bryant put a stop to the window percussion, the drummer-boy stands and steadies himself against the steal poles. Recalling his colorful evening, he begins to shout labels at a blonde sitting in the arms of a young guy. She jumps up to hit him after he called her a slut. Her actions only fuel his performance. The name-calling continues and the noise level once again rises.

At a red light at the intersection of Charles Street and Greenville Boulevard, Bryant slams the bus into park. Lifting his wheel into its upward position, he spins his 5-foot-10-inch frame out of the driver’s seat and strides back to his clearly intoxicated passenger. The usually jolly worship leader at ECU’s Campus Crusade for Christ group, Bryant points his index finger at the passenger and tells it how it is. “You need to shut up and sit down. You don’t treat women like that! If you don’t stop, you can get off my bus right here.” The passenger sits,  and Bryant returns to his driver’s seat and accelerates off. The traffic light has long been green.

“I put up with a lot of crap, but that kind of thing – that’s not cool,” Bryant says over his shoulder. “I mean we have training for situations, but a lot of it is based on instinct. It so often depends on the situation.”

Bryant has been driving the purple and gold buses back and forth to downtown for three of his four semesters with ECU Transit. “My friend told me about [driving buses]. He did it while he was studying and said it was a pretty good job,” explains Bryant. “So as a sophomore, I just applied and got it.”

ECU Transit requires its drivers to acquire a permit, undergo 18 to 20 days of training before sitting three tests with the DMV. “It’s not a short process,” Bryant recalls. “Driving a bus is much different to a car. It’s longer, it’s wider, it’s heavier and you’re carrying a lot of people.” Pirate Express drivers undergo additional training in how to recognize and deal with dangers and unruly passengers.  

Once Bryant collects his bus from the depot at 10.30 p.m. each night, it’s his bus. What he says, goes. “I’ve been hit, hit on, sworn at, danced on and more,” Chandler says smiling. Last night he threw passengers off at an early Copper Beech stop. But, “there’s no fighting on my bus.”

Closer to 2 a.m. a static message comes over the bus radio – a fight has broken out on the Route 905 bus. Bryant adjusts the volume to hear his supervisor instruct the female driver. As Bryant passes Campus Towers on Cotanche Street, Greenville Police have just arrived and pulled the passengers off the bus into the 29-degree November air.

Davidson is not ignorant to the challenges Bryant and other drivers face. “The most visible challenge is student behavior,” he states. “Over time we’ve seen an escalation in the events of fighting on the bus, people being sick on the bus, people doing other kinds of damage while they’re on the bus, graffiti and then any general kind of damage.”

Davidson details the extensive attempts to curb student behavior. “Technology has probably been the area in that we’re most proud and where we’re working right now,” he explains. “We have GPS so the buses are being tracked and we can see where the bus is on a map, so if we’re having issues on a bus, if there is a fight, we are better equipped to work with law enforcement to get them to the bus.”

Crystal Trace, a recreational therapy major living at The Bellamy, sees the benefit of the night bus service. “The drivers put up with a lot – I’ve seen one clean up vomit before – but if there were no buses, I’d have to drive,” she asserts.

Bryant agrees. Although the Greenville Police Department has communicated an overall decrease in driving with intoxicated charges since the service started, Bryant says the biggest risk for him are drunks on the road. “I’m always watching,” he explains, touching the air break pedal slightly as a car pulls out of a nearby driveway.

Bryant makes seven trips between The Bellamy and the downtown hub before driving his bus back to the depot beside Pitt County-Greenville Airport. He sets down the bus, cleans it out and tops up the fuel tank with 25 gallons of gas. He finishes up about 3.30 a.m.

“Thankfully tonight’s Friday, it’s the weekend, so I can sleep in,” Bryant says, reflecting on his growing tiredness. After working his five hours at $15.25 per hour last night, he turned into his bed at 4 a.m., only to wake at 8 a.m. for his community corrections class an hour later Friday morning. “The nights are long, but it pulls in the money.”

Bryant will graduate in May 2012, but sees this job as something leading into his future as, hopefully, a parole officer. “Some people sit behind a desk, others in an office,” Bryant says, adjusting himself in this seat. “But this bus – this is my office.” 

Trifold increase in international student athletes studying in American Colleges

Racing from training to the dining hall for a quick but wholesome dinner before retreating to her dorm for the night is a typical weeknight for Dana Gray. A freshman tennis player for East Carolina University, Gray is one of three international student athletes who make up almost one third of the team. Like a growing number of other student athletes across the world, Gray has moved to the United States to pursue an academic sporting career.

The rate of international student athletes studying in American colleges has almost tripled since 1999/2000, according to the 2010 National Collegiate Athletics Association Student-Athlete Ethnicity Report. Making up little more than 1.6 percent of all collegiate athletes during the 1999/2000 academic year, international students recruited to play for American college teams has risen to greater than 4 percent or 17,000 athletes during 2010. 

University of Tennessee Associate Professor of Recreation and Sport Management Robin Hardin has been researching the increase since 2007 and said international student athletes are attracted to American colleges for the increased training opportunities along with the opportunities to pursue tertiary education. “In some countries once you start excelling in athletics you’re pulled from the educational system,” Hardin said. But migrating to American colleges provides students with enhanced “athletic training resources and medical resources,” he said, adding,  “The facilities are usually better on campuses than they are for some athletes internationally.”  

Gray’s hometown of Rotorua on the North Island of New Zealand has only 56,000 residents and no squad training facilities or options to pursue tennis beyond the club level.  But even nationally, “there honestly isn’t anything, especially in New Zealand,” Gray said. “You’re so isolated. If you were in Europe maybe [there’s the opportunity to pursue competitive tennis] or if at least you had so much money that you could go on the pro [tour].” But at ECU, she said, everything is provided. “You have all the facilities you want, the coaches you want, everything is planned for you,” she said. “All you have to do is show up” – an idea foreign to many international student athletes.

The American collegiate sporting market is vastly different to most nations in the world, with athletics programs receiving large endowments from alumni and corporations alike. According to a 2000 collection of articles, The Business of Sports, college athletic directors are charged with the responsibility to improve their programs in order to increase donations and subsequently improve their training facilities, coaching and support staff. However, it is college coaches who are delegated the role of continually searching for the best talent and recruiting athletes from American and international competitions to boost their sporting teams.  Hardin said coaches are recruiting athletes regardless of their nationality or location.

Daniel Woods, 18, is an engineering freshman on the ECU swim team. A gold medal recipient at the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games for his home nation of Wales, he credits his recruitment and at least nine other ECU swim team internationals to skill. “I don’t mean to sound big headed, but I guess it’s because we’re better,” Woods said. “We get selected to swim for international teams because they see our times and know that we can make their team better. It’s the only reason they do it. They don’t need to fill out a diversity index or anything like that,” he said.

Recruitment to college sports teams used to be achieved by coaches travelling around to high schools or spending six weeks in Europe scouting, however, Hardin said technology has made it much easier. “If I’m a swimmer, tennis or volleyball player in Romania, I can make a video clip of my match and email it to a coach or they can watch something live over the Internet,” he said. “The technology has really helped coaches be more exposed to those athletes and see what the athlete’s ability is.”

Along with technology, the rise of recruiting agencies has led to the increase of international student athletes. Athletes pay agencies, such as Play Atlantic – the New Zealand company Gray used after being disappointed from her personal attempts – to create online profiles and upload videos onto YouTube to send to coaches abroad in order to secure full-scholarship positions on sports teams across the Unites States.

Gray and Woods are both part of the 63 percent of Division 1 international student athletes studying on full scholarships, according to Hardin’s current research. Labeling her scholarship a “free ride,” the opportunity to pursue tennis and receive a free education was one of Gray’s biggest influencers to study in America. Hardin found only 10 percent of all international student athletes were receiving no financial support.

However, everyone does not appreciate the use of recruitment agencies to secure team places on scholarships. Woods was cautious in stating he used an agency, preferring to say the coach recruited him. “When I was signing up for the NCAA, they asked if we used an agent, and my agent kept saying ‘Don’t say yes’ because it’ll cause a whole lot of complications. It’s really strict,” Woods said.

Further, the arguments against international student athletes competing abroad are rising. Following the tennis season last spring, Baylor University was ranked the top university in Division 1 Tennis without any American players. Women’s Tennis has the highest rate of international players, with an NCAA estimate of more than 35 percent in Division 1 teams, a figure apparent at ECU.  However in the junior levels this is prohibited, with the National Junior College Athletic Association enacting a limit on international students on team rosters. Similarly, the NCAA has also received pressure to make a similar ruling as criticism rises over the increase in international students, especially when they take opportunities away from local students.

As Hardin’s research explored, many international student athletes have to abandon their education after they begin to excel in athletics. That means they are exposed to higher levels of competition and become fiercer in their ability. For those athletes who are unsuccessful as professional players, the American college market is a second chance for sport and their education. So along with increased experience, many athletes are entering as freshmen older than their American peers. However, to avoid such age and experience inequality in the future, the NCAA has made a ruling that from August 2012, all players must commence their collegiate sporting careers within six months of their high school graduation – a ruling that could have effectively prevented Gray from securing her place.

According to Hardin’s current research, although 47 percent of Division 1 international student athletes are from Europe and 24 percent from Canada, the remaining number are from Australia, New Zealand and other places whose school year operates on a different schedule to the United States’. Gray graduated in December of 2010, although secured her scholarship in March 2011 for an August 2011 start. The NCAA ruling will prevent more athletes like Gray from securing team places because their high school graduations are greater than six months from the start of college .

Although the NCAA ruling will limit the athletes from some markets, the potential for further increases in the rate of international student athletes continues. Despite Gray and Woods securing places that would otherwise be for American students, animosity is non-existent in their teams. Woods said his swim team is “probably the best team at welcoming everybody,” and the tennis team is the same.

As Gray leaves the campus-dining hall to head back to her dorm for a few hours of study before leaving for a tournament the next morning, she waves to a group of students who say hello – her teammates. Although the ECU tennis team is not ranked in the top 50, Gray and her teammates put their hope in a new Russian player. According to Gray, “She’s supposed to be really, really good.”

Analysis reveals most failed courses at East Carolina University

An analysis of grades issued at ECU since 2006 reveals the top 10 most failed courses are all mathematics or logic based with fail rates between 24 and 35 percent.

Sophomore level class Algorithmic Problem Solving and Programming Laboratory is the most failed course from the analysis conducted with readily available Registrar’s office data. Fail grades were awarded to 34.5 percent of the 550 students who have taken the class since 2006.

Computer science teaching instructor Bobby Hoggard has taught the introductory programming course for 10 years and said the findings were “not surprising.” “[Students] have to be able to solve problems logically and not everybody who signs up for the course has a logical mind,” he said. “You can’t teach someone to have a logical mind that doesn’t have one, but if you have one then it can be developed.”

A senior computer science student, Samuel Scott, admits computer science is hard at first. “It’s very new to a lot of people and unfortunately with programming it’s all right or it’s all wrong. If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work so they can’t give you a grade, even if you were close,” he said. 

Although compulsory for computer science majors, the significant number of non-majors electing to study the course may be linked to the finding, said Hoggard. “[Algorithmic Problem Solving] is a class that is very important for our majors to understand, however, you do not have to be a computer science major in order to take the class,” he said. Students often take the course “because they think computers are cool and they really have no idea what they’re getting into when they decide they want to do something with them,” he said.

The drop out rate is varied, said Hoggard, with some students realizing their struggles early and swapping majors while others elect to repeat the course. Those who “retake it generally will make get a better grade the second time,” said Hoggard. Other students act early against poor grades and utilize tutoring services by graduate students at the on campus computer science labs.

Alternatively, philosophy professor Dr. Richard McCarty said mathematics based Introduction to Logic is taken by students who have already failed mathematics classes and require a general education mathematics class to graduate. “It’s not surprising that many of these students would find the course as difficult as their math courses,” McCarty said. However, students with high mathematics proficiency also take course for general humanities credit, he added. “The challenge for an instructor in this course is to provide content that is stimulating for math students but not too challenging for others,” he said.

Many professors declined to comment on the results although McCarty provided a breakdown of grades for the five years he’s taught Introduction to Logic. His grade book data demonstrated the analysis findings are not representative of all sections, with his classes, totalling only 237 of the 642 students since 2006, having a failure rate much lower at 13.5 percent.

A driver education course was actually ranked highest with a 46.2 percent failure rate, although it was eliminated from the ranking because non-degree seeking students regularly enroll in the class.

The analysis eliminated classes with an average annual cohort of 20 students, that is, classes with fewer than 100 students in five years.

Rank	Course code	Name	% Fail grades	No. of F grades per total course enrolments
1	CSCI2310	Algorithmic Problem Solving	34.5%	190/550
2	MATH3229	Elementary Statistical Methods II	32.5%	39/120
3	CSCI2300	Computer Science Survey	31.7%	39/123
4	CSCI2427	Discrete Mathematical Structures	30.3%	112/370
5	MATH1085	Pre-Calculus Mathematics	29.4%	113/385
6	CSCI3300	Introduction to Algorithms and Data Abstraction	29.3%	61/208
7	ICTN2530	Network Environment II	29.3%	129/440
8	PHIL1500	Introduction to Logic	26.2%	168/642
9	BITE3311	Financial Information Systems II	25.7%	48/187
10	MATH1083	Introduction to Functions	24.3%	164/676

ECU CRU: The story of how one changed lives continue to change more

It’s an overcast Friday afternoon, as Brad Woodlief arrives with his family to check in at the Island Colony Resort at Myrtle Beach, S.C. But unlike most families who rush out to enjoy the beach, Woodlief patiently sets up a table in the hotel lobby. Indemnity forms, cash drawer, nametags, room lists and keys, this isn’t your usual Myrtle Beach getaway. Over the next few hours, Woodlief greets 50 college students, collecting cash, allocating rooms and explaining the weekend’s happenings. Most Myrtle Beach vacationers would curse the grey sky and imminent rain upon the arrival of carloads of college students, but Woodleif just smiles, laughs and jokes. Brad Woodlief, 35, is the co-director of East Carolina University Cru, formally Campus Crusade for Christ, and this weekend is ECU Cru’s Fall Conference.

ECU Cru is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ International, an interdenominational Christian student movement that aims to provide a spiritual resource to college students worldwide.  Member groups are staffed by college educated, passionate, God-fearing men and women like Brad Woodlief, who strive to see lives changed. “Seeing a student or a person who was once living one direction, sinful and destructive, change and then see God work in that person’s life,” Woodlief said, is the most rewarding part of his job – a job that demands seven days a week of dedication.

Woodlief says he can “give [himself] time off, but not days off.” Each morning he wakes beside his wife of 12 years, Michelle, in their humble house in Greenville, N.C., before meeting with his co-director, Craig Morrisett, and part-time staff worker, Becca Hartman. “It’s different each day,” he said, “but we will meet and plan the week or plan the vision or the goal for what needs to be done.” In the lead up to Fall Conference there was a lot of planning and paperwork, Woodlief, stressing, “I hate the administrative part.”

The rest of the school day sees him on campus, eating lunch and meeting with students. Students involved in the leadership of Cru are mentored and encouraged, while others he meets with have responded to welcome cards at weekly Cru meetings. Still others are completely unknown. Each week Woodlief said he from parents concerned for their children. “I get phone calls all the time, probably two a week; email or phone call,” he said. “They tell me, ‘My daughter, she’s raised in a church but she’s in the party scene right now and I’m concerned.’” Woodlief’s heart breaks; the party culture at ECU is one he knows all too well. 

Graduating in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Nursing degree, after switching majors in order to pursue his now-wife, Woodlief said he spent three years drinking and partying. “In my home town, it’s the reputation: you come to ECU to party and so I was doing that.” But in his junior year, everything changed. Woodlief’s roommate, Deiter, was the worship leader at Cru. “He would invite me and invite me and invite me. I never wanted to go and I never went.” But Deiter persisted.

Over the course of fall semester, Deiter shared his faith with his roommate. And one night sitting alone on his bed in Jones Hall, only days before his 21^st birthday, Woodlief said he realised, “If I dive into this Christian thing, I can’t live this life anymore.” Being churched in a small tobacco town, Oxford, N.C., a town he labels “very moralistic,” Woodlief finally grasped that it wasn’t enough to believe Jesus was real, and so that cold fall night, Woodlief professes, “I gave my life to the Lord.” From that night on, he nervously started attending weekly Monday night Bible studies and Thursday night meetings. In reflection, Woodlief recalls, “I saw all these students who were just happy. And I’m like, ‘they’re having fun, but they weren’t drinking.’ And that was just so weird for me, I couldn’t figure it out.”

In the months following, Woodlief said his whole life changed. His girlfriend and now wife became a Christian, he spent his summer in the Soviet Republic of Belarus  doing mission work and he realised his nursing career was going to be short lived.

In Belarus, Woodlief recalls handing books out to the local people. “If I said ‘read this book about Jesus,’ they said ‘Okay’ and by the next day they had read the whole book.” He remembers the Belarusians being so different to Americans. Here, he says, he’s lucky if students read the title of a book he gives them. But it was that summer abroad, overcoming language barriers to build relationships with students, that transformed his future. “It was that summer that I said, ‘Man, I could do this full time. I want to give back to Cru for what it’s done in my life.’”

After marrying his wife in September 1999, Woodlief and his wife Michelle, turned their backs on a potential combined $150 000 annual income and headed to Daytona Beach, Fla., for Cru staff training. Woodlief used his four years of college for little more than eight months of nursing in order to fund the next year and half he spent travelling to raise support. He started at ECU Cru in May 2001 on a summer mission, before officially starting the job a mere week before America was rocked by the terror attacks on Sept. 11.

Although he is employed by Cru, there is no central fund for staff salaries, so 10 years and two children later, Woodlief still spends his summers raising support. “I’ve got churches, I’ve got people that I’ve never even met and I’ve got alumni now,” he recalls. He says the support he recieves is unexpected and “crazy”, albeit frustrating with the economic downturn. “One guy dropped like two thousand bucks and I’d never ever met him!”

A second account for Cru’s everyday operation is funded by approximately $7 000 raised at the football booths at Pirate home games. The staff, students and their families all chip in to keep the movement alive.

Ashley Kirk, a fourth year English education major at ECU, says she was saved by the work of Cru on campus. “The staff, like Brad and Michelle, are such an encouragement to me and my friends on campus,” she explains. “The way they devote their lives to changing the lives of students is an encouragment and example. It’s like having adoptive parents on campus. Their kids all get involved, they all dress up and come to football games and we fundraise all together.”

Almost 12 years since his first week at ECU Cru, Woodlief leads Monday night ‘impact groups’ and faciliates Thursday night meetings. On weekends it’s tailgating with students and then on Sundays, student-staff planning meetings. “[Cru headquarters] say, ‘Brad, do whatever it takes to reach East Carolina with the gospel or to bring God to East Carolina.’ And so I do.”

Robert Tant, a fifth year senior at ECU, is thankful for Cru staff. “Brad and Craig are like the skeleton of Cru. They are the support. They make things happen. They organise rooms, speakers, hotels, everything. Then us students, we fill in the flesh. We make it look the way we want.”

Woodlief says it’s a spiritual legacy to have students like Tant involved in Cru. “After 10 years, you see generations come through. It’s baffling when people know people. But it’s awesome to see spiritual legacies passed down.” From one dorm-mate sharing the faith with another, who shares it with another, lives are changed.

One life changed that ensures Woodlief can remain on campus is ECU IT specialist James Orr. A once student, graduate and now teaching instructor, all in Woodlief’s time at ECU, Orr is Cru’s faculty representative. Orr signs off room reservations and oversees on-campus events, effectively giving Cru a seal of approval. “When Brad asked if I would consider taking on this role, it was something I was happy to do because Cru played such a big role in my life and faith journery while in college,” Orr explains.

Although student and staff numbers have dropped since Orr’s time at Cru, “I think the biggest encouragement [to Brad] would just be seeing students’ lives changed,” Orr says. “Just in my circle of friends, there are countless people whose lives were changed through [the staff’s] involvement in Cru.”

When Woodlief started, there were nine staff members and almost 500 students meeting weekly in Wright Auditorium. Today, it is Woodlief and his co-director, Craig Morrisett and their wives, and weekly meetings see about 100 students. But Woodlief is not discouraged. In the future, “I definitely won’t move schools,” he says. “I could see myself moving somewhere into church work, but mainly because I’m 35 and the age gap to college students is only going to get bigger.”

After hearing a student at Fall Conference say his peers are either “drunk, high or don’t care” about the gospel, Woodlief stresses his biggest hope for students in Cru is to “gain a vision and passion for the lost.” Only half joking, Woodlief delights in saying how awesome it would be for ECU to lose its party school reputation in favor of “the school that had crazy amounts of students come to Christ.” 

ECU student president attacked by shark

Salter Path, N.C.

East Carolina University Student Government President Joshua Martinkovic, 22, has been identified as the victim of Sunday’s shark attack at Salter Path, N.C.

Martinkovic was surfing alone at sunrise when a shark bit his leg, Carteret County Sherriff Asa Buck III confirmed at Monday’s press conference.

“Yesterday, we didn’t know his identity because he wasn’t carrying a wallet,” Buck said. But when Martinkovic didn’t return as expected, friends contacted the police. “After checking with local hospitals we were able to confirm his identity,” Buck said.

Martinkovic was taken to Carteret General Hospital, where doctors continue to manage his condition. Emergency Doctor Michael H. Lowry said on arrival Martinkovic’s “leg was mangled pretty badly and he’d lost a lot of blood.”

An examination of the wounds on Martinkovic’s foot and leg led doctors to believe a great white shark attacked him. Lowry said he would be transferred to Pitt Memorial Hospital when his condition stabilizes. “Our goal is to make sure he doesn’t lose his leg,” he added.

The sheriff confirmed the attack as the first at Salter Path in more than 40 years. Witnesses at the beach said were stunned and thought Martinkovic was joking around. While out surfing with his son, Surfer Wallace Pierce, of Wilmington, N.C., heard him yell “Help, Shark!”. “But then I caught sight of his leg,” he said. “Me and my son got out of there as quick as we could.”

To put the attack into perspective, East Carolina Professor and Institute for Coastal Science and Policy Director John Rummel said, “Sharks typically are not aggressive animals…they are not the killers they’re portrayed to be.”

Beachgoers in Carteret County are being urged to use caution when swimming and surfing and not swim alone. Even so, “We want to stress to tourists that we think the beaches are safe,” the county sheriff said. “Hundreds of people swim in the Atlantic Ocean every day safely.”

However for additional safety, the sheriff said helicopters would be flying over area beaches for the next few days. 


Please note: The ECU student president was not injured during the writing of this story. The facts of this story are fabricated and taken from the assignment guideline.