Four years after CATA expanded its late-night Blue and White Loop service to include Thursday nights, officials are considering eliminating late-night service altogether.

As early as next fall, the Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) could cut the late-night Loop service from campus bus schedules. Currently, CATA operates the Blue and White Loops until 2:30 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

But instead of having a safe method of transportation to and from the downtown area, the most common destinations being bars and apartment parties, students will now have to make alternate plans when going out.

While walking is certainly an option for the warmer months, it definitely is not during the cold, snowy State College winter.

Anyone who has ever ridden either Loop late at night knows just how many students rely on the bus. Furthermore, anyone who has ever ridden late at night also knows what kind of shape these students are in when they do so - generally speaking, it is not a condition in which one should try to drive.

Ideally, students would not drink themselves to a point where they must rely on public transportation to get home safely, but this is college, and both the Loop and alcohol serve a vital function. Just think how many more students would drive to and from the bars and apartment parties if the service were not available. Certainly this town would see a drastic increase in drunken driving accidents.

On the surface it appears that CATA officials are making a poor decision, and university officials are content in letting them do so. But this decision has less to do with them and more to do with state officials misappropriating funds, officials say.

Instead of doing things that make sense, the state legislature prefers to do things that make no sense whatsoever. And instead of designating transportation funding to cities based on ridership, the state does so based on population size.

While this does not seem like it would hurt Centre County all that much, it does when the state gauges a city's population by the number of registered voters it has and not by the actual population. Because a large portion of Centre County's population is students and few students are registered to vote here, the state does not recognize them as residents.

That is the most asinine thing I've heard since I was told Kevin Kelly was returning as starting kicker after his pathetic Orange Bowl performance. Since when does one have to be a registered voter to use public transportation?

This is just another example of how the state has a blatant disregard for the students of Penn State. After all, where else in the state will a city and its residents be in a similar situation?

The state needs to change the way it allocates public transportation funds. Simply giving the largest cities the most funding leaves a lot of Pennsylvanians out in the cold.

According to its Web site, CATA as a whole served about six million riders last year. When put into the context of Centre County's population, 135,758 according to the 2000 U.S. Census, each resident rides about 44 times per year. In comparison, each of Allegheny County's 1,235,841 residents rode Port Authority Transit (PAT) buses about 55 times per year.

While Centre County may not have as many residents as Pittsburgh, the main city PAT serves, its residents rely on public transportation just as heavily, and CATA should receive funds accordingly.

State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, said the funding will be discussed by the legislature in January, but in an Oct. 27 Daily Collegian article, he did not seem to think this issue was of high priority.

He said there are many other issues with mass transit across the state that will probably take primary consideration before the state considers increasing CATA's funding.

"Pennsylvania has more bridges to maintain, repair and replace than all of our contingent states combined," he said in the article. "In addition, Pennsylvania has more roads to maintain than New Jersey and all of the New England states combined."

But what could be more important than increasing safety and saving lives?

While Penn State certainly takes enough tuition dollars from its students each year to be able to pay for the late-night service and still be able to fund President Graham Spanier's jet, it should not have to do so.

But maybe what the state needs is for the university to step up, make a financial commitment to the Loop services and ultimately CATA will receive the funding it needs.

After all, if it isn't a priority for Penn State, the legislature probably won't see it as one either.