In my previous position at Rider I would take hundreds of high school students visiting from Italy, Kazakhstan, Spain, Portugal, and other places on tour to New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.  I was essentially a cruise director without the boat.  The students were visiting in the summer for two weeks where they would go to class for 3 hours in the morning and learn English.  The remaining 21 hours was up to the Study Tours Counselors to take them to various tourist attractions.

A group of Spanish students in Times Square (2007)

It was the premier summer job to have as a college student.  You got to interact with international students, see Broadway shows, and go bowling.  Although you were paid to have fun, you were also paid to have a lot of responsibility.  We took hundreds of students to Times Square and set them free.  Of course, there were parameters.  After seeing a Broadway Show, we would leave the theater, walk them to Times Square, show them where they were eating dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.  We would tell them that they could go anywhere in Times Square as long as they could see the overhang of the Hard Rock Cafe.  They were also instructed to travel in groups of at least two people.  We gave them brightly colored wristbands with times on it so that they knew what time to come back for dinner.  Hot pink wristbands ate at 5:45 p.m. and neon orange wristbands ate at 7:45 p.m.  We did this 4 times each summer.  Each excursion was like running an event.  Everything needed to fall into place just so, to have a successful trip.

Planning

The planning for this day began months and months prior.  The tickets for the Broadway shows had to be ordered in January, the Hard Rock Cafe was reserved in March, and the buses were booked in May.  Our staff was also hired in advance (around April), and trained in May for the June arrivals.

As a staff member, we were taught best practices for keeping the students safe.  Each student was given an emergency contact card upon arrival, which had a phone number to our Campus Public Safety Office and was to be used if a student was separated from the group.  In 2007, many of the students did not have cell phones that worked in the United States, so they had to ask a vendor to call on their behalf.  This procedure was a great one to have and proved to be effective on more than one occasion.

Then the unexpected happens

You can take a headcount on a bus ten times and sometimes come up with different numbers.  But, if you get the same number two times in a row then you should be ready to go, right?  Well, on most occasions yes, except for the time you've miscounted twice.

I took the lead role on this particular day.  We lined up our buses around the corner from the Hard Rock Cafe - the final meeting point for the night.  As the students arrived we pointed them to the buses.  Our buses sometimes took up two city blocks.  Each counselor had a bus, and I rode the last bus out of the city.  As soon as each counselor had counted their bus, they checked in with me and I sent them on their way on a 90 minute ride back to campus.  Loading procedures sometimes took 30 minutes.  Once the last group was ready, and I boarded the bus.  As we approached the Lincoln Tunnel one of the group leaders from Kazakhstan came up to me and said, "I think we're missing two students."  This particular group from Kazakhstan was a 70 people and thus was split into two buses.  We radioed the other bus to get a headcount.  We were in the Lincoln Tunnel.  We counted again... and again... and again.  Yes, in fact we had two missing students.

Then, my boss called.  He had gotten a call from Campus Public Safety.  There were two students standing outside the Hard Rock.  They had gotten the meeting time confused and arrived there 45 minutes later than they were supposed to.  His contact at the Hard Rock was with them.  I told my boss that we left the city and asked what we should do.  I couldn't just get off on the Turnpike and hitchhike back to the city.  He decided to have the vendor put the students in a cab and have the cab drive them back to Rider's campus.  I was relieved that they had used the Emergency Contact Card appropriately and that someone we knew was there to make sure they got in the cab.

We arrived back at campus and helped everyone get settled again.  Curfew was at midnight.  The rest of the staff was making rounds in the building trying to enforce curfew.  I was sitting in the office doing some preparation for the next day's excursions when the leaders from Kazakhstan came to speak with me.  They were worried that the students that missed the bus had been abducted.  We had been back on campus for over three hours and they had not returned.  I sprang into action.

I started by calling Campus Public Safety to see if they had heard from the students.  I then called the local police department to put them on alert.  Finally, I tried to track down the organization that manages the New York City cabs.  I thought perhaps they had a tracking device on their cabs or could identify when a cab left New York City.  No such thing existed.  I was stumped.  The only thing we could do was wait.

Another 45 minutes went by and the leaders from Kazahstan were pacing.  Finally, the cab arrived and the students came walking up the campus mall. I had never been so relieved in my life. 

What can be learned

1. Having a safety plan in place can save lives (and find missing students).
2. Taking a headcount is not rocket science, but when you miscount, it can end in an explosion.
3. It's good to work with fantastic vendors; you never know when you'll need them to help you.
4. You can never tell people what time you're supposed to meet too many times. 

I have to say that 100% of the students that arrived to visit in the five years I worked at Rider went back to their respective countries at the end of their stay.  Sometimes, they got lost while they were here, but they were always found!

I invite my fellow Study Tours Counselors from 2007 to 2011 to send me your best stories and I'll try and feature them on my blog.  When did the unexpected happen to you?  How did you deal with it?