About 30 eager freshmen, clad in black dresses, high heels and other semi-formal finery, waited in the lobby of Shaw Residence Hall on Friday night for the bus that would transport them to the OnCenter for a night of dancing and mingling with their fellow students at the annual Freshman Semi-Formal.

‘Everyone was all dressed up and excited to go,’ said Melissa Apostolidis, an undeclared freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences.

Their wait, however, turned into an hour-and-a-half-vigil for a bus that never came. Apostolidis and about eight friends headed down to the lobby a little before 9 p.m. and ended up waiting until 10:30 p.m., she said. Without money for a taxi or any other means of transportation, they simply gave up. Some headed out for fraternity parties, while others just wrote off the entire evening.

‘I stayed in and did absolutely nothing,’ said Karly Suk, Apostolidis’ friend and a freshman pre-dentistry major.

Apostolidis and Suk are now trying to recoup the $10 they spent on tickets to the dance and have contacted staff in the Office of Residence Life, which organized the event. Organizers acknowledged that there were problems with the bus service, which was contracted to a private charter company, but are still trying to get to the bottom of it, said Tremayne Robertson, event organizer and a residence director for the Brewster/Boland residence halls. A bus had been diverted from the semi-formal to another route, but Robertson said he could not provide specific details or say how many students were affected by the problem.

Organizers are considering refunding the stranded students for the price of their tickets once the extent of the problem is known, Robertson said.

‘That would be the fair and consistent thing to do,’ he said.

A lot of students lost more than the price of admission after buying dresses especially for the occasion, Suk said.

‘We were all very annoyed,’ Suk said.

Published on January 25, 2004 at 12:00 pm