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Location services temporarily malfunction on Rutgers bus app Christian Zapata Correspondent
By using Nextbus, students can track the next available bus from the Rutgers app — a feature that was unavailable for most of Tuesday due to a system malfunction. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS BONIELLO
Rutgers buses were unable to utilize location services this Tuesday leading into yesterday due to a system malfunction. Nextbus, the mobile tracking ser vice used by University buses, experienced nationwide malfunctions across all its carriers, leaving students unable to check what time the next available bus was coming. The Rutgers University Depar tment of Transpor tation Services posted on its Facebook page at 5:50 a.m. on Tuesday, informing students that buses were experiencing technical difficulties and that the situation was being monitored. Services were back and running around Wednesday afternoon, said Jack Molenaar, senior director of the Department of Transportation Services (DOTS). Transportation services contacted Nextbus the moment they realized services were down, looking for preventative measures to ensure that the system kept running. “The last thing we wanted is for the company that provides us with the tracking to not work on the first day, the first two days of classes,”
he said. “It’s back up now and we were pretty much on top of it right when it stopped and we reached out to the company asking them what was going on.” Since their partnership in 2006, transportation services has never had an issue with Nextbus, but failure of its tracking services occurred twice over the last 48 hours, an occurrence which Molenaar said is “fairly rare.” Molenaar said transportation services plan on phasing out Nextbus in exchange for a newer system, Transloc, by sometime next September, a decision which he said is unrelated to this incident. “We were working with our provider First Transit on a couple of different issues, and one of the issues is changing the on time reliable to a system that’s been labeled better than Nextbus,” he said. “It will give you as a rider more information and will have a separate app where you can see a map of exactly where the bus is, too. It will have the arrival time and the location.” In addition to a new system, Molenaar says they are looking into adding wifi on University buses. Whether buses carry RU wireless or their own personal network has yet to be determined.
Campus sees drop in sexual assault reports Ryan Stiesi samil Tabani Staff Writers
Despite reported sexual assaults at four-year colleges in New Jersey increasing in 2016 from the year prior, the number of reports at Rutgers has dropped from 26 in 2015 to 23 in 2016. In other colleges, there was a 24 percent increase in reports of rape from 2015 to 2016, with a total of 138 reports in the latter year. Reports of fondling and dating violence also rose, with 70 reports of fondling in 2016 and 63 reports of dating violence, according to a report by NJ Advance Media. Reports of sexual assault increased in approximately half of the four-year colleges across the state, according to the report — but Rutgers saw a decrease in reports of rape, fondling and domestic violence. According to crime statistics in the Safety Matters 2017 report from the Rutgers University Police Department (RUPD), reports of fondling decreased from 14 in 2015 to eight in 2016. And after a 68 to 114 report increase from 2014 to
2015, the number of domestic violence reports decreased to 84 in 2016 – 16 more than the amount two years earlier. Between 2014 and 2016, there were zero reports of dating violence at Rutgers, according to the RUPD report. Despite a decrease from 2014 to 2016, data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that Rutgers ranked eighth highest in the nation in 2016 in reported sexual assault cases. According to NJ Advance Media, efforts from colleges across the state to encourage students to report sexual assaults on campus have played a role in the higher number of reports. At Rutgers, efforts like “Turn the Campus Purple,” hosted by the Office of Victim Prevention and Violence Assistance (VPVA) and last April’s “Take Back the Night” march, attempt to raise awareness of the prevalence of sexual violence on campus. “The University has policies and processes in place to address alleSee Reports on Page 4
“What we do is we track what happened, what we did and then what notifications we put out,” he said. “We put stuff out, we let RU info know, we put signs up, we did as much as we can to notify, but it’s hard to do that when you rely on an app. How do you notify someone when the app’s not working?” This is not the first time Nextbus has experienced regional failures. During 2013, its makers received more than 7,000 angr y emails from customers in response to a blackout of the program’s features that ser vice the Washington, D.C. metro system, according to Slate.com. Nextbus systems are used at more than 50 universities and transit systems across the countr y, including Rutgers Newark and Camden, according to its site. Molenaar said he was thankful that the system’s outage did not happen during September, a time when first-year students familiarize themselves with the University’s transportation services. He said that students saw flashbacks to 2006 when finding the next available bus required them to peer their heads down the street. “I’m glad it’s working right now, and hopefully it’ll work tomorrow,” he said.
Dutta: U. supports DACA Erica D’Costa Staff Writer
In an email to students, Chancellor Dutta emphasized Rutger’s position on DACA program repeal as an action that is “inconsistent with American values.” JEFFREY GOMEZ / ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR
VOLUME 149, ISSUE 128 • University ... 3 • opinions ... 6 • INSIDE BEAT... 8 • Diversions ... 9 • SPORTS ... BACK
On Tuesday evening, Chancellor Debasish Dutta sent out an email to all students discussing Rutgers’ policy on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) act. The email was sent after a federal district court issued an order directing the President Donald J. Trump’s administration to continue to accept renewal applications for DACA. University President Robert L. Barchi previously said he encourages all eligible Rutgers—New Brunswick students to contact the Rutgers Immigrant Community Assistance Project (RICAP) for free consultation and assistance. In addition, Dutta announced that Rutgers has hired a case manager to further support undocumented students. “Let me emphasize that Rutgers considers ending the DACA program to be inconsistent with American values,” Dutta said. See DACA on Page 4