Ram Tours offers affordable destinations for URI students

09/09/08 - Looking for something to do on a Saturday? The Ram Tours program offers affordable, and alcohol-free, weekend programming.Upcoming events for the fall semester include trips to a Boston Red Sox game, the Big E, Six Flags amusement park, and day trips to Boston and New York. A long-weekend ski trip to Quebec is also planned, as well as a week in Panama during Spring Break.

Ram Tours started out as a Student Life program under the direction of retired Dean of Students Fran Cohen. After two years, the program was transferred to the Student Involvement Office.

With day trips to destinations such as Boston and New York City, the program has become increasingly popular, with trips routinely selling out well in advance, said Ram Tours Coordinator Bonnie Turano.

Turano said she is often able to get group rates for trips, and tries to use any available

funding to offset the ticket costs of other trips. However, tickets for some events, such as the Sept. 14 Red Sox game, are sold at face value. Some organizations do not offer group discounts, and funding for the program is limited, Turano said.

While the majority of funding for the program comes from ticket sales, Ram Tours is partially subsidized by the offices of Housing and Residential Life, Student Involvement and Student Life. The total funding from these sources comes to about $26, 000 for the academic year. Most of this sum goes to cover the cost of bus rentals, the program's single greatest expense, as well as advertising, printing costs and the payroll of the part-time graduate assistant employed by the program. Any remaining money goes to subsidize the cost of expensive tickets to popular events.

The office of Student Life is partially funded through a portion of substance abuse fines that it collects.

Vice President of Student Affairs Tom Dougan, who has been in charge of the Student Life office since Dean Cohen's departure, said he believes support of the Ram Tours program is a good use of the funds.

"We want to promote activities for our students that don't involve alcohol," Dougan said. "We also get concerns expressed periodically that there's not enough to do on weekends, bingo ... we have some dollars that we generate, and we think that's a good purpose for them."

Chip Yensan, director of Housing and Residential Life, said that his office's support for the program stemmed from the failure of a similar program in which individual residence halls sponsored day trips for their residents.

"There was a considerable amount of redundancy in those tours and ... it wasn't the most cost-effective way to do it ... so we just looked at a way to bundle this so that all residence students could have equal access to the program, as well as any other students that are interested, and we've been a partner in that program ever since," Yensan said.

As an auxiliary enterprise, Housing and Residential Life is funded largely by housing fees and tuition.

Ram Tours offers a Spring Break trip that Turano said she sees as an alternative to the "hard partying" option.

"I thought to myself, well let's give students an alternative to the Spring Break that they typically do, which is go to an island and be drunk and stupid for a week," Turano said. "There are students out there that don't want to go and do that kind of Spring Break. They want to go and experience something that they're going to remember for the rest of their life."

Participating students last year visited Rome during Easter week. This year's program will take students to Panama, chosen as a comparable, yet cheaper alternative to Costa Rica.

Turano tries to think of new and different activities for students each year, but does most of the trips on a regular basis because they have proven popular over time.

Among the new trips Turano said she is looking forward to this year is the ski trip to the Canadian ski resorts of Mt. Sainte-Anne and Le Massif.

"It's reasonably priced and the mountains are awesome, and kids are into snowboarding," she said.

"Then on the other hand I think too, Canada ah, you know, they think they can come to Canada just to drink, but if you're going to be skiing all day or snowboarding it's kind of hard to be drunk, it's a long day on the mountain the next day."

Tickets this semester range from $1 for last weekend's trip to the Providence place Mall, to $1,890 for the Spring Break trip, and are available through the Memorial Union box office.

While only URI students are permitted to purchase tickets, students are allowed to purchase two tickets for most events, meaning that they can bring a non-student friend if the wish.