Suburban Express Statement From: Dennis Toeppen (Owner of Suburban Express) Date: Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017 at 4:09 p.m. To: The Daily Illini, Danita Brown Young (Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs), Martin McFarlane (Director of International Student and Scholar Services), Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela (Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies)

Suburban Express was founded in 1983 by a sophomore U of I student who was dissatisfied with transportation options on campus — schedules, equipment quality, driver attitude, and other attributes. Since the founder was a student, he knew exactly what students needed and wanted, and he took on Greyhound and other companies and won. Suburban Express grew and grew, and the University of Illinois changed and grew. As it changed, Suburban Express services changed. Computerized ticketing, automated ticket machines, and then Internet ticketing were introduced -- before other companies even considered them. Along the way, Suburban Express encountered cheaters who cost Suburban Express and its customers thousands of dollars — bad check writers, people who reverse credit card charges for services they used, people who made and used counterfeit tickets. Suburban Express believed that it would be doing a disservice to the world if it did not hold the budding new adults who cheated it responsible for their actions. Suburban Express has therefore consistently held students to their commitments and promises. This approach has not been popular with cheaters. With the advent of social media, a small number of cheaters have the ability to amplify their complaining and anger, and convince other cheaters that they have been wronged. Suburban Express has received many black eyes over holding students responsible to their commitments and promises. In 2013, an employee of a subcontracted bus company made an inappropriate comment to a non-english-speaking customer. We agreed that the comment was inappropriate and we promptly apologized. Nevertheless, a student agitator made it his full-time job to tell the world that Suburban Express is racist based on the comment which we agreed was inappropriate, and for which we apologized. He filed a lawsuit against Suburban Express and went so far as to convince Highland Park Police to arrest the founder, for online comments which the agitator himself may have posted. The judge in the matter, who found the founder not guilty, essentially stated that she had no reason to believe that the agitator had not posted the comments himself.

Unfortunately, the 2013 episode caused many students from countries in Asia to abandon Suburban Express and ride a competing company. We were very hurt by the loss of those riders. We meant them no harm, and we felt we were being unjustly punished. When we wrote a recent promotional email, we mentioned that Suburban Express riders would not encounter Chinese exchange students on our buses. That's because they all ride our competitor now. It was an ill-advised statement to make, because it upset the very people we were sad to have lost. Suburban Express welcomes students of all nationalities on our buses. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to further their own agenda. We apologize for our insensitive statement, and we hope to do a better job of unifying the campus community in the future, from our office in the heart of campustown.