In between studying English and Econ, cooking with his cooking club, and playing intramural sports, Alex saw a need on campus and took the problem into his own hands.
Hometown :NYC
Major: English
Minor: Econ
Fun fact about him?: He’s a lefty
Favorite quote or personal motto: “It’s not about who did it first, it’s about who does it best”
Activities he’s involved in on campus: Thought into Action, Cooking Club, Intramural Sports (Basketball and Flag Football are his favorites).
What inspired you to come up with “DDrive?” “Last Spring someone got a DUI at 6 am but they probably just needed to get home in the very cold winter weather. It can be impossible to find a ride sometimes at Colgate, and I realized that there was a need for 24-hour transportation. I talked to the director of purchasing who deals with the cruisers and found out that cruisers cost $60 per hour. Ride-share is the cheapest type of transportation. Uber and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) did a study that found that convenience in finding rides (such as apps like Uber) reduce drunk driving. In Seattle DUIs have gone down 11% since when Uber was launched there in 2011.”
How do you go about starting this service? “It started with a Thought Into Action practice test first. I went to Scott Brown and we discussed the Colgate Venture policy. The program is not through Colgate, but this allows students to use their gate cards to pay for the service. We started the program on October 30th. For the first weekend we focused on marketing. First of all, bystander intervention training will be mandatory for anyone who wants to be a driver. It was also important to talk to Hamilton police and campo about driver safety and taking care of eachother. However, with the amount of money to be made with minimal traffic we hope it would be easy to get students to start signing up to drive for the service.”
What are your plans for the future for DDrive/ how do you see this service expanding? “We hope to expand this service to other rural schools. There are 3,465 schools in towns with a population of less than 100,000 people, so a lot of schools could really benefit from DDrive. Right now it is just in its test run phase, but we predict that when it gets colder it will start to generate more revenue. We also plan to develop a mobile app for the service, maybe even as soon as after Thanksgiving break!”
How do you feel about being campus celebrity? ”Honored because it spreads the word about DDrive and hopefully will lead to students making safer choices.”