In the meantime, police are relegated to curbing hitchhiking through "educational programs" at Boston area colleges. This consists mainly of providing the schools with anti-hitchhiking posters and occasional meetings with school officials and students.

Even beyond the question of enforcement, there is the issue of dealing with the crimes once they are committed. Although for the recent murders in the Boston area, the Attorney General's office has acted as a coordinating body, such incidents of cooperation in cases where crimes were committed in areas of different police authority is rare. The problem is frustrated when the crimes occur in small towns with small and inadequate detective staffs.

Both the Gillispie and Ehramjian parents feel that the investigations carried out by the Cambridge and Brockton police were not as through as they might have been. Aram Ehramjian, Sandra Ehramjian's father, even went so far as to write a letter to Attorney General Quinn charging that the Brockton police had not visited the places where Sandra was known to have stayed or checked out many of the leads the family had supplied.

THE "HITCHHIKE MURDERS" have had a strong impact on the travel habits of many Boston-area women. "There are definitely fewer people hitching and girls have stopped hitching altogether," said Bianca Sorieri, a student at Boston University. "Every morning there used to be more than half a dozen girls who would stand outside the dorm and hitch to class, but they've all stopped now."

Boston University's two student newspapers have carried article warnings against hitchhiking while the school's women's center has set up a ride board for intra-city travel.

Radcliffe women have had mixed reactions to the murders, and though some have stopped hitching, many have not. Some House Masters have warned women about hitchhiking, although the University has generally taken a hands off attitude, feeling any action on their part would be paternalistic. The attitude of most students at the University about the murders was summed up by one senior woman who said, "Whether I change my habits or not, I'm definitely pissed off."