Safety in the Bubble

Erring on the side of caution has never been my personal forte. I run around the block at night, alone. I walk to my apartment in University Park from the Citrus Annex Parking lot, slowly, while holding my computer and purse and talking on the phone. The other day, I carried my cashed paycheck in my back pocket, and ended up dropping a 50 on the ground in front of some "shady characters" sitting outside of Little Caesars. To be honest, when it comes to my own personal and physical safety, I just don't care enough.

There are hundreds of students on our campus, however, who DO care about their safety. Events over the past year have caused the feeling of safety in our "APU Bubble" to pop. There was the armed robbery at Little Caesars and the mugging in the alleyway between the Shire and the College Center during the spring last year. There was the assault in front of Alosta place this summer. And of course, there was the drunk man who drove onto our campus and attempted to get two freshman girls to get into his car. At the end of last year, there was the alleged "gunman" on campus. And this year, there have been several break-ins in Crestview.

A lot of people already know the Azusa area isn't safe, but living on a college campus is supposed to provide some sense of protection. What else is Campus Safety for besides writing a million annoying parking tickets?

It is definitely apparent that most students know robberies and muggings occur close by, but don’t give it a second thought. Staying safe is, honestly, up to students. Having Campus Safety around is no different than having police around.

“You can’t predict everything,” Lieutenant Randy Richardson said. “I would like to think we deter a lot of what happens just by our presence and by our being proactive, but there are a lot of holes that are left open for people to take opportunity. It is a mixed effort between us and people taking responsibility for their own well being.”

And safety is relative as well. What might feel ‘safe’ to a person living in a bullet riddled neighborhood is probably different than what feels ‘safe’ to me, a girl who grew up in Abercrombie mall-ed, grassy park covered suburbia.

Considering that most crimes such as these occur off campus, it can be concluded that our campus IS, for the most part, safe and that it is the surrounding areas that are not.

So, how can someone stay safe if they care enough about their safety to try?
HAVE COMMON SENSE! I am not implicating that people who are held at gun point are responsible for their situations, but certain bits of common sense might have at least prevented a mugging. Here are a couple of rules to follow, provided by your fellow classmates:

Girls: Find someone to walk with you. Yes, we know you are buff and hardcore and can totally take care of yourself, but lets just pretend you can’t. At the very least, you can ask a hot boy to be your ‘escort,’ and score a little one-on-one time.

Another option is the Rape and Aggression Defense (RAD) classes offered by APU. RAD teaches women how to defend themselves in real situations, and even teaches that in some situations, doing nothing can be the better decision.

So the ultimate question here is are we ever really safe? I highly doubt it. I think any shattered comfort levels are a result of people recognizing that they aren’t indestructible. In the Adolescent Culture & Evangelism class I took last semester, Professor Steve Gerali mentioned the fact that adolescents have it in the back of their minds that they are, in a way, bulletproof. Nothing bad can happen to them. It is why so many of youth are shocked when they get pregnant when they used protection, even though they had been warned that only abstinence is 100% effective.

Technically, college students are still in the end of adolescence, so certain feelings of indestructibility are wearing off, but are still somewhat present.

People need to pop their comfort bubble and recognize that bad stuff happens, and yes, it does sometimes happen to you, instead of waiting for that bubble to be painfully popped by something else.