Last November, DPS reported that a Lyft driver sexually assaulted a female USC student in the early morning of November 1 when she was returning to her apartment near campus from West Hollywood. This incident sent waves of shock and terror through the student body, especially among those who identify as female.
Since then, female students at USC have reported heightened anxiety and fear surrounding Lyft rides near campus and around the LA area, even though USC’s Free Lyft program was created precisely with the intention of protecting students’ safety.
We interviewed several students on campus about similar experiences. Betty, an undergraduate student, was one of the students willing to share her experience with us.
“When I actually arrived at my destination, he didn’t unlock the doors,” said undergraduate USC student Betty, who asked to be identified only by her first name in fear of retaliation from her harasser. “At that point, I realized something was off.”
Betty’s trip was to the South LA Animal Shelter in Chesterfield Square, which is about a 20-minute drive from the University Park campus. It was then that she experienced unwanted advances from her Lyft driver.
Throughout the entirety of the trip, Betty’s driver kept telling her they should hang out, asking her to dinner, and asking for her phone number.
“He kept insisting, ‘Oh, but I’m a local, I’m older. I’ve been here for a while, I can help you. I can show you around,’” Betty said.
Once they arrived at her destination, he kept her in his locked car for five to 10 minutes. He wouldn’t let her leave until she finally conceded to giving him her number, even calling to check she gave out her real number.
Before she blocked him, Betty’s driver ended up texting her later that day and asked her to grab dinner.
“My alert level is always so high,” Betty said. “I’m just always kind of nervous the whole way until I’m around campus, [because] then if I have to jump out of the car from that distance, I can still walk home.”
Betty said she doesn’t feel comfortable taking Lyfts or public transportation anymore, and often uses rides from friends as her primary method of transportation.
“I’m kind of just trapped a little bit around campus,” Betty said.
On the rare occasion she does have to take a Lyft, Betty said she shares all her trips with her best friend so her location is known at all times. Even with her location shared, Betty said she can’t shake that nervous feeling.
“I’ll always just stare at the routes like all the time to make sure that nothing goes wrong,” Betty said.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon experience for many young women.
“Research generally shows that anytime there’s this major transition for young women going to college, women joining the military, women moving to another city or another country, they’re at risk for being sexually assaulted or raped, because they don’t know anyone, they don’t know who to trust,” Carl Castro, professor of social work at USC and an expert on the issue of sexual harassment said.
In Lyft’s Community Safety Report, released in 2021, the ride-share company documented a stark number of 4,158 incidents of sexual assault during Lyft rides, with the majority reported by passengers.
The Association of American Universities (AAU) Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct, published in 2018, reported that 26.4% of all undergraduate females surveyed experience rape or sexual assault. Only 20% of female student survivors of rape or sexual assault, ages 18 to 24, report to law enforcement. Among the 33 participating universities are UCLA and Stanford University, yet not USC.
“The universities don’t want to know the truth; this includes USC. USC is not unique; no university wants that data to be right,” Castro said. “There’s no place in America that women are safe, no place, and college campuses refuse to collect the data because they don’t want parents to know the answer.”
Out of all the colleges and universities across the US, 89% reported zero incidents of rape, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
It is often claimed by universities that it’s difficult to report sexual assault because students don’t report, either in fear of retaliation by authority figures and their perpetrators or simply to protect their privacy. While these reasons are credible, they still do not account for the complete absence of data from the majority of the nation’s universities.
Castro’s comments, as well as the BJS’ data, reflect the lack of a university response following the rape of a USC student in a Lyft near campus that rocked the entire USC community.
Michelle Garcia, senior associate director of USC Transportation, said the department was informed of the alleged rape, yet was not made aware that the Lyft driver who committed the rape was banned from the platform.
“Nothing came back to us through university channels,” Garcia said.
Even with the magnitude of impact this incident had on the USC student community, Garcia said that the one rape case, along with the other issues involving sexual harassment or assault in Lyfts her department had been informed of, was not significant enough to raise broad concern.
“We do millions of rides a year. We have not been made aware of many issues where we would say ‘Hey, we need to take a look at doing something else,’” Garcia said.
Garcia did note that her department is looking to incorporate the Lyft’s Women+ Connect program into USC’s Lyft service, yet could not confirm a date as to when they might add this service, which would allow students to be paired with solely female drivers.
“I’m almost always in a Lyft by myself, so I would be relieved using a female-only driver function, especially at night,” Betty said.
While this potential addition to the Lyft services available to students inspires hope for safe modes of transportation around campus, until it is incorporated, female students will continue to live in fear.
“We just don’t know how to treat women. It’s appalling. We stick our heads in the sand because we don’t want to, as a society, and sometimes as institutions of higher education, to acknowledge that it’s unsafe for women in many of these environments,” Castro said.
This story is part of Flare, an Annenberg Media initiative that focuses on women and queer stories. The goal of this beat is to immerse our audience in the culture, identity, and issues surrounding women and queer communities.