At the beginning of my freshman year, I was shocked to see students who were my age or just a few years older driving vans full of fragile humans through New York City traffic. Classes alone were stressful, but having a job that required students to battle NYC drivers for 13 hours every week seemed unmanageable.

I started driving for Ram Van my junior year in their “Early Arrival” training program. Forty students and I each took turns behind the wheels of the school’s big white vans, while those who weren’t driving chatted in the back seats and shared the aux cord. After surviving the notorious parallel parking test, we celebrated with a Ram Van party. The week that I had originally dreaded turned out to be some weird Uber-esque version of summer camp.

Once the semester officially started and the older drivers returned, the Ram Van office became the headquarters for a club that paid you to be a member, like an anti-frat. We spent our afternoons complaining about a variety of inconveniences: those annoying tablets that never work, getting assigned a van with a camera facing the driver, the new construction that narrowed the Henry Hudson Parkway into a single lane or that one passenger who demanded we turn off our “inappropriate” music. This was our unique way of bonding that other students couldn’t understand. As a driver, I realized Ram Van was a much more complicated system than I had understood it to be as a passenger.

Stelanie Tripodis, FCRH ’20, who has been driving at Ram Van since her freshman year, spoke to the complicated logistics behind being a dispatcher, the person who reads the city’s traffic and notifies the drivers of the fastest route, which is constantly changing.

“We run ourselves like a business, it’s fast-paced and involves a lot of problem-solving,” she said. “Crazy accidents happen, people get angry and expect you to be above the traffic.”

There are also the late-night shifts between Thursdays and Saturdays from midnight to 4 a.m., where party passengers who’ve had too much to drink can get motion sickness. “Someone will puke in a van at 3 a.m. and you have to go in and clean it up,” she said. The next time you take a van, remember to thank your driver.

Rain or shine, Ram Van operates every day the university is open. Tripodis shared the harsh realities student employees face during the winter months.

“There was a crazy snowstorm last year and the roads weren’t salted,” she said. “We had vans literally parked and stuck in the roads throughout the whole entire city for eight hours.”

It was the student employees’ jobs that day to go out and get those vans, but they ended up getting stuck themselves. “We had to walk back to campus from wherever we were parked … it was a big disaster,” she said.

Some snowy days were more difficult. Students had woken up for their morning shifts to drive to Lincoln Center through the snow, only to be told while on the road that the university had closed due to extreme weather. Imagine being stuck in a van by yourself while your classmates enjoyed a snow day.

Despite the cold weather, the office can cultivate deeper bonds. “A lot of people join Ram Van not only for money but for love,” Tripodis said. “A lot of people who met through Ram Van have ended up staying together and even getting married. It’s a strange inner circle.”

Ram Van drivers don’t just drive students in between Rose Hill and Lincoln Center: “Special runs” is Ram Van code for making a trip to an unusual destination.

One shift, I had to drive members of Public Safety, many of whom are retired NYPD officers, to a shooting range in Manhattan. Other special runs include driving golf carts on campus for the university’s Jubilee event, a two-day party for alumni. A more memorable shift was when I drove Fordham’s prestigious Board of Trustees to the Bronx Zoo. Or rather, I gripped the steering wheel while they shouted at me for going to the entrance where I was assigned to drop them off, not the entrance for their private event inside the Gorilla Room.

Ram Van drivers transport students, faculty, staff, alumni and prospective students all over the city. We meet and speak with everyone. Yes, even Rev. McShane, SJ, president of the university, rides the Ram Van.

We are the face of the university, and I love being able to look at my school from behind the scenes. And the best part of this gig? Besides the fact that it’s the highest paying job on campus, drivers ride for free.