With the flick of a finger, he can access your name, location, phone number and destination.
But that didn't matter to the sophomore the Student Nighttime Auxiliary Patrol van driver picked up on Sorority Row.
"I'm never such a cynical bitch unless I'm in a SNAP van," she said. Then, she stuttered to say, "I love it."
As the rest of the van stared in awkward aversion at the young woman continuing to grumble, she may have missed the fact that SNAP has been making some snazzy technological upgrades. They have developed a new system for transporting the tired, the studied-out and even the wasted around UF's campus.
The new system includes automated reservation and dispatch services, a web-based application to reserve a ride, a soon-to-be-unveiled smartphone app and a phone system that recognizes phone numbers and stores a rider's previous route requests to cut down on time.
According to University Police officer Gregory Castronover, the SNAP coordinator with UPD's Community Services Division, the new system allows 100 percent of phone calls to be put into the system, whereas previously some students couldn't even get an answer with the old manual phone operating.
You could tell it must have been working with the crazy amounts of people squeezing in and out of the clumsily heavy van doors.
After another stop, the van was loaded with a group of about eight freshman girls and three freshman boys.
"Is this even a road?" asked one of the boys as we drove behind Little Hall on a road clearly marked for Service and University vehicles.
"I think so," chimed in a blonde in the front, "But we're driving on the wrong side of the - "
Her sentence was abruptly cut off when a girl spotted a cat from outside of her window. Suddenly, the group of girls erupted into a chorus of meows - for five freaking minutes.
Trying to take his mind off the feline fiasco, one of the guys nudged his friend and asked if the vans had always had the tablet mounted near the passenger side of the van.
The Samsung Tablet PC is another product of SNAP's new changes. They can dispatch vans based on location thanks to the tablet's GPS capabilities, and they can enable calls to be dispatched and displayed instantaneously on a touch screen instead of being yelled into the blaring radios of yesterday.
Also, within the next few weeks, the SNAP smart phone app will be up and running, with codes for scanning and downloading the app to be adorned on all vans, business cards and occasionally posted as a public service in the Alligator.
For now, students can use a Web-based application to place pick-up requests, which can be accessed from any computer or smart phone with Internet access.
However, SNAP still hasn't come out with an app to drown out the squeals of inebriated freshmen trying to figure out where their stop is (which would be very helpful).
