About STRIPES
STRIPES is a Mizzou service organization comprised of a community of students dedicated to having fun while increasing the safety of Columbia's streets by providing free rides home for MU students.
STRIPES is a service organization that, in its first year, was comprised of about 215 student volunteers. We operate every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night from 10 pm until 3 am while school is in session. We give free rides home to any University student. We will pick them up anywhere in the Columbia city limits, and will only take them home (we won't take them to another bar or party).
On an average night, approximately 18-25 students show up at the STRIPES headquarters between 9 pm and 10 pm. This is when we have our food and essentially relax before the evening operations start. When we begin, there are 6-7 people in the phone room, and in each of the 6-8 cars we have one male and one female. If we have enough volunteers for the night we send groups of 3 people called Larry's, one of which is male, around to the different clubs to hand out STRIPES business cards and serve as a reminder for people to call us.
One of our three phoners takes incoming phone calls on the STRIPES line (573-442-9672). The phoner takes down the patron's information and that information is assigned to a vehicle. Dispatchers call our cars with the assigned ride to give them the information. When our drivers pick up the students they call the dispatcher to tell them, and again when they drop the students off at home. This way the executive running the Vehicle Status Board knows where each car is at all times. Each car can only pick up as many people as they have seatbelts. This continues until we take our last call at 3am.
As far as organization of the program, STRIPES falls under the Department of Student Services (DSS) of the Missouri Students Association (MSA). The program is led by the Executive Director of STRIPES, an executive board, and team leaders. Each of the executive members is put in charge of one facet of the program such as our finances, publicity, or keeping records. The team leaders are in charge of making this an organization that is fun for everyone and as a way to get to know each other in more intimate groups. One of the greatest things about this program is that we are COMPLETELY student run - from the very beginning all of the work has been done by students. We are very proud of that fact.