I HAVE lived in the Venable neighborhood for three years and I've always thought it was a safe place.
The train tracks are right behind my house. I cross them several times a day to get to class or to the Corner. A girl was raped there last year.
I walk through the church parking lot all the time to get to Rugby Road. A girl was attacked there last year.
And now, as I move into my new place in the same neighborhood, as the neighborhood is filled with happy, exuberant, carefree students, two girls already have been attacked this year.
I am foolish for thinking that I live in a safe area because it simply is not true.
We are not as safe in this community as we would like to believe. When I was a first-year student I had an exaggerated sense of safety at the University. I truly believed all of the notions of a community of trust filled with honorable students. I was naive.
Many of us grew up in big cities where we knew that crime was a part of life. Looking out for yourself included taking precautions against being attacked or robbed. In New York or Washington or Atlanta, you know you have to be on your toes. But once we come here, we feel that we are safe because we are in an idyllic academic community.
I was naive as a first-year student because I always felt that students walking in the Rugby Road area were safe. I thought that because it was so heavily traversed by students at all hours of the night, little could happen, even if there were shady characters lurking around.
I ignored the warnings from the University police and from the administration. I felt that since I had been familiar with Washington all my life, I was more than prepared for any crime in a quiet university town. I was wrong. Never had I heard of such horrible crimes committed against my peer group as have occurred against my classmates. Students make easy prey for criminals: We walk around late at night, often by ourselves, and our defense mechanisms are frequently lowered because of alcohol. We need to be aware of this. We are not in an isolated, safe academic community where nothing bad can happen to us.
This is not a unique message. We are warned in such a manner all the time, but I don't think many of us really listen. I know that my ears have been shut and I have always thought that my neighborhood has been safe. Every day we see even more serious examples of our refusal to understand the safety measures we must take. Last week when I was walking home from the bars, many students were walking on the tracks. I've also seen many girls walking home by themselves late at night.
Maybe the message has not sunk in. Maybe students don't think that it will happen to them. Yet everyone talks about the incidents. Everyone is aware of the danger. People at bars and parties express their concerns about safety, but they continue to walk home by themselves.
Why hasn't there been a general outrage? It's not that the community is entirely apathetic. After all, for over a year, students were up in arms about the Ruffner Footbridge beating. We need to have the same concern for these attacks.
We can't just talk about these incidents for a couple of weeks, and then go on living our carefree but ignorant lives until the next time a girl is attacked.
Rather we must be vigilant about always walking our friends home and about ensuring the safety of our fellow students. Most of all we need to accept that we do not live in a safe community. It is not a community entirely of honor and trust. Bad things can and do happen. Let us be aware of that and do all that we can to make sure that such things do not happen to our classmates or ourselves.
(Peter Brownfeld's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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