ALEX BUCKNAM
Asst. News Editor
The Fredonia campus bus has officially left four students traumatized during their nightly travels.
Since the creation of the Campus and Community Bus in 1973, there have always been stories of students being forgotten at places.
But no stories could prepare four students for what happened to them on March 22. What was supposed to be a fun evening dinner for a group of friends turned into a night they will never forget.
The night began like any other. “We were all chilling in the living room deciding what our Saturday night plans would be,” stated one of the students.
It was around 7 p.m. when they officially decided what they were going to do. “We planned to go have an evening meal at Applebee’s,” stated one of the students. “The bus departed five minutes before we decided, so we had to wait until it’s 7:50 p.m. round at Brigham Road.”
Around 7:40 p.m., they walked down to Brigham Road to catch the bus, but the bus never came for the 7:50 p.m. route.
Upset and feeling like dinner plans were ruined, they were going to turn back and head home and figure something else out. However, they all thought of the delicious meals they already planned on getting, so they waited for the bus’s 8:45 p.m. round at the William Center.
Eventually, the bus showed up at its respective time, and they officially arrived at the T.J. Maxx plaza at 9:11 p.m.. They reportedly told the driver that “we would be at the same spot at 10:30-ish, which is the bus’s last stop, so we had enough time to be served and eat our food.”
The dinner was going great and the food was delicious. It wasn’t until 10:20 p.m., before they were about to leave, that everything went horribly wrong.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bus drive by 20 minutes early,” stated one student. They all thought there had to have been some sort of explanation for this.
It wasn’t until 10 minutes after the bus driver was supposed to be at the T.J. Maxx plaza that they all agreed he was not coming back.
“We were all confused and had no idea what to do. We decided to call friends to see if anyone could pick us up,” everyone said.
Nobody could pick them up, and no Uber or Lyft accepted their request for a ride, so the group reached the conclusion that they would have to walk the two miles to campus in the pitch dark, at 11 p.m., in the freezing cold.
The walk started fine. “We tried to make light of the situation by bitching about the bus driver and swearing we were gonna report him the next morning,” stated the group.
It wasn’t until they got down the road that things got even worse. Sudden gusts of wind caused a box of food that one of the students was holding to fly into the face of another student.
Quickly stopping to apologize, the other two started laughing at the situation, which caused one to spill his drink all over himself.
“We both smelt like Applebee’s, fried chicken and Mountain Dew,” stated the student who spilled his drink.
They eventually continued their walk, making it to Dollar General, where they decided to pause for a quick second and take a small break.
The group were sitting on the outside of the Dollar General when a car sped through the empty parking lot, hitting a puddle and splashing all four students.
“We genuinely thought, ‘Our night could not get any worse than this,’” they all said in agreement. “We decided to just get up and continue our walk — we were all thankfully close to our townhouse.”
Upon approaching the townhouse, they quickly realized they all forgot their keys. And where did they leave them?
Applebee’s. The place they had just traversed two miles, stinking of chicken and soft drinks, to escape.
Unfortunately, The Leader was unable to receive any additional information regarding the situation. Legend has it, the four-piece were never seen on campus again, so haunted by their experience with the campus bus that they saw no other choice but to drop out from SUNY Fredonia entirely.