It’s 4:30 a.m. and the phone rings. I figure it’s someone calling for the person who used to live in my room. I mean, I NEVER give my house number out. If you want to reach me, call my cell. It rings again, so I get worried and I pick it up, but by then they’ve hung up.
Then, there’s a knock on my door. Slightly annoyed and extremely discombobulated, I get up to answer the door because I think it’s my inebriated roommates who are rolling in at an ungodly hour without keys.
Well, it wasn’t. It was some raspy-voiced pervert with a penchant for sexual harassment. Our obscene caller was able to figuratively force his way into the comfort of our apartment, ripping the secure feeling out of “Home Sweet Home.”
Now I pose this question, with an alert warning all females of a suspicious male lurking around, and with the jump in the number of sexual assaults, from one to eight, wouldn’t you think that security would have pedaled, I mean driven a tad faster down to our humble abode?
Did I mention that this happened to two other apartments? Where is our security alert now?
Extremely freaked out because of the vulgar nature of these harassments, I called security. Three times.
I bet if I called and reported underage drinking and a passed out person, security would have been here more swiftly. Or maybe if there was some illegal parking going on, you know, with a Quad designated car parked in a Village spot, we would have gotten at least two security members on the case. I guess free handles and a parking ticket fee are much more glamorous than investigating some harassing phone calls.
Forty minutes folks. When a security officer finally did arrive at our apartment about 40 minutes later, the end result of his investigation was to tell us to synchronize our clocks so if we did get anymore calls, we would know the exact time that we received them at. Good job guys!
While I know that a few harassing phone calls are not exactly the most pressing issue, security did get two other calls about this matter. Does this count as an emergency now? And what about the fact that this is a time of heightened awareness? If the timeliness of response by security is such a problem, then why not hire some more security personnel for the nighttime, weekend shifts?
Oh, did I mention that these calls came from off-campus? None of my roommates gave out this number except to family members and a few select friends.
Silly me for forgetting to note the time of these repeat phone calls. I forgot that I probably did something to warrant these frightening surprises in the night. I guess $32,000 doesn’t provide for my safety. I’ll just start carrying mace around in my bag and put a tracer on my phone. Then when I walk everywhere, I’ll stop at the security stations around campus and make sure that I have an officer escort me to the library so this way if anything does happen, I’ll know that at least I can’t be blamed because I am “protecting” myself.
So I guess that in the end it is my fault. My bad, guys. I forgot that 18 full-time security officers are a copious amount. And the security booth at the entrance of campus is more than efficient.
I feel such a comfort in knowing that our campus is taking such an active role in trying to alleviate the chance of any sexual assaults and harassments on campus. Now I wonder if this has to be reported in the Clery Act Security Report next year…
As a female, I am concerned about the security on campus. Why should I be afraid to answer my phone or walk to the library? I came to Fairfield because of the extremely low nature of sexual assaults. I looked for that security factor when I applied to colleges. Now that I am on this campus where the levels of sexual assaults have risen, I have to wonder how the administration is not taking more safety precautions to ensure the safety of its on-campus population.
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