This will be the last time I will refer to our campus as a “bubble” until we are engulfed in soapy solution or until SAC throws a foam party. I’ll use this final hurrah as best I can.
On almost every tour I lead, one parent will guaranteed ask the question: “Why do you have co-ed bathrooms?” But later on, another will doubtless ask: “Do students generally feel safe on this campus?” We always say that we do, that our school is “up on a hill,” and that the only thing we worry about is meeting a confused deer on our way to the athletic center. We point out the blue light system, Camel Cards, and the active Campus Safety officers, and we keep walking. At Conn, we’re always safe, until we’re told that we’re not.
In the spring of 2007, an unidentified man was caught by several students looking into shower stalls on the fourth floor of Larrabee. In fall 2008, Thomas Lee Walden, a contractor hired by the College and listed on the Connecticut Department of Public Safety Sex Offender Registry, was found peeking underneath bathroom stalls in Cro. Julia Cristofano’s article this week discusses the newest campus menace: an unfamiliar man who makes disconcerting advances towards women on our campus.
There are smaller issues still—“bubble” or not, we do not live in the gated community that we have conjured up in our heads. It is incredibly easy to walk onto our campus without running into a patrolling Campus Safety officer. Access boxes break often and easily, students leave their doors unlocked without a second thought, and ID checks at the Gatehouse are rushed and infrequent. On the other hand, we know who our Safety officers are, and if we’re lucky, some them of know us. We can vouch for a friend who’s forgotten their ID in a dining hall. We are trusted to be responsible for our guests without having to go through complicated procedures. Still, we’re ambivalent: we relish the convenience of lax gatehouse checks and propped open doorways until they endanger our well-being, then we cry “safety offense” and get angry when these services are misused.
The alternative to our current security system is to live in a pseudo-police state found at other, notably larger colleges and universities, with campus safety officers at every corner and security measures at every door. In high school, I stood outside for at least twenty minutes a day to enter the building, waiting in a line of students to pass through a metal detector and get my bag searched. In a recent visit to NYU, I had to leave ‘proper’ identification with the security guard—my faded Conn ID didn’t make the cut—and I couldn’t reenter the building without a resident coming down to fetch me, show her ID, and sign me into the log. To get onto Conn’s campus after dark, I flash my ID and I’m waved through. We are not embedded in an urban city, nor do we have 40,000 students like NYU—another tour guide adage is “At Conn, you don’t know everyone’s name, but you know everyone’s face”— but we have safety issues to worry about, too.
I’m not sure what is in place is enough. Campus safety officers are always on patrol, but they can’t be everywhere at once. The blue light system is great, but it takes ten minutes to get between one and another. Our current security system is inconsistent. On one hand, it encourages to students interact with off-campus visitors—inviting friends to stay a weekend, meeting a local in the library—but on the other, it limits our personal decisions, like getting into other dorms past two AM.
We have not come up with a perfect security system, but then again, no school has one. Campus Safety is not just here to break up our parties: they keep our campus safe, but they are not the only outlets. Because we have so many freedoms, students have a personal responsibility to keep this campus safe for themselves and others. We should follow the examples of the women who reported the man in the library, or the various peeping toms. It’s our responsibility to enact the safety measures we are given.
