Party buses concern campus administrators

Just before midnight, a crowd starts to gather outside the dorms on the University of South Florida campus in Tampa. Students stand on the sidewalk. They’re all dressed up with someplace to go and waiting for a ride.

When the party buses arrive, college students hop on and head to hot spots all around the city. These are not school-sponsored events, but any socially connected student with a Facebook page gets blasted with 30 to 40 invitations every week, and college administrators are concerned about what happens on some of these trips.

“The students come home late at night, intoxicated,” said Alan Kent, assistant vice president for wellness at USF. “We've heard reports that underage students are served alcoholic beverages on the buses.”

Investigators with Florida’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco heard the same thing, and went undercover earlier this semester on a party bus. According the investigative report, it was quite a party.

Agents paid $10 for a seat on the bus, and watched as underage students were served cups of vodka and fruit punch. The students were encouraged to drink up, and then participate in a “rump-shaking contest” on the bus.

The report also says one girl “appeared drastically intoxicated, almost falling to the floor while dancing.”

The bus was headed for a club in Ybor City, but the students never got inside -- 24 of 26 were cited for underage drinking.

“The alcohol is so cheap and so free that they drink so much and they come back highly intoxicated. Some of them have alcohol poisoning, some of them end up in the hospital,” said Gina Firth, associate dean of students at the University of Tampa.

It's Firth's job to keep students safe.

“There are rapes that occur as a result of the heavily intoxicated states of these individuals,” she continued.

That's why, Firth says, the University of Tampa kicked the party buses off campus. Alan Kent says USF would like to do the same, but it can't.

”As a public university, we don't have the right to prohibit anyone from coming on campus,” Kent told investigative reporter Doug Smith.

Last week, the Tampa Alcohol Coalition met with some of the promoters who run these party buses. Coalition members hope the meeting will be a good first step toward keeping students safe and preventing underage drinking.