Campus Creepers
Every woman on campus knows the struggle of picking your courses and seeing a dreaded night class. This particular dilemma comes not from your hatred for staying late on campus, but from the fear that comes with walking around alone at night. From a survey group of 30, 50% of women do not feel safe walking alone on our campus in the dark. This is incredibly troubling as women make up 54% of the undergraduate population, and none are shy about their complaints.
Since women have consistently voiced this issue for all to hear, you’d think people would listen. Don’t get me wrong, there are several services available made to make students feel safer on campus, but many of them are not executed properly. For example, the university boasts its many investments in lighting, but these improvements do not include the outer parking lots, the ones with the most dangerous spots. Not to mention the uneasy feeling of speed walking to said lots through Sunset Ave, trying to avoid any potential creeps. The true feminine experience is clutching your Stanley Cup and contemplating whether it would make a good weapon should anyone try to assault you. This part especially bothers me as women are not permitted to carry pepper spray or any other sort of weapon that could be used for self-defence, so we are forced to conjure up any possible solution.
Furthermore, the university has its own personal constable service that is said to patrol 24/7, but realistically how often do you really see them? Every few minutes during the day, rarely at night. Well, it only takes a few seconds for someone to attack you, and you will not have time or clarity of mind to phone them when it does. Personally, I’d feel much better strutting around campus if I knew there was a patrol station up ahead, but there is no such checkpoint at which to feel safe since they opt to cruise haphazardly down the streets. This lack of permanence makes many people feel uncertain about if the constable services would even reach them in time, should they require saving. This is not limited to emergency services either, as some women would prefer to find a security guard kind enough to walk them to their destination if they feel scared, but they are nowhere to be found. Even if you find them by chance, many women feel uncomfortable asking a random man to walk them to their car, security or not. This feeling is not completely baseless as there are cases of women falling victim to men with this same occupation plastered on every news outlet to remind them not to trust anybody.
Even sitting in Leddy as a woman will result in an unnecessary number of stares, and even a few approaches. In my opinion, any other place on campus is pretty much fair game to shoot your shot, but Leddy Library? It just gets to a point. Just take a look at a recent scandal our university faced, the notorious UWindsor foot guy. This student of ours was caught in the library secretly recording women’s feet to upload online for sexual purposes. How is any student meant to feel safe on campus with the knowledge that people like this roam the halls? While this man was caught and prosecuted, chances are there are others like him. This is why the campus should be improved upon to make all the students feel safe, regardless of who might be lurking.