Blog
January 31st 2010 | 1
Lesson Learned
It’s my third year at U of W and I am happy (and surprised) to say that despite the campus’s downtown location I have never had one sketchy or frightening experience where I felt my safety was at risk – that is, until last week.
After finally being freed from a 6:30-9:30 (why 9:30?) night class I began my usual jaunt to the bus stop on Graham Avenue by The Bay. As I neared the corner of Portage and Vaughn Street, a big group of teenagers were walking in my general direction. Not gonna lie, they did look a little suspect to me. but I attributed my suspicions to my deep fear of teenagers in general.
Anyway, I was just getting ready to cross the street and all of a sudden two of the little punks got into a fight (just 30 seconds prior they seemed to be the best of friends) and one of them ran towards me. Of course, the other guy chased him and whipped out some pepper spray which he proceeded to spray directly into the face of the dude right beside me. Let’s just say I have never used so much profanity in my life – my face f’ing BURNED!
Now luckily I didn’t bear the brunt of the spray but I was still quite shaken by the experience. I managed to make it home where I rinsed my eyes and soaked my face in my sink for a good while so that it didn’t burn so bad.
At first I was just plain angry. Why did the university schedule the class until 9:30 and not 9:00 like all of the others? While it is dark at 9:00 at least there are lots of students heading to the bus stop at that time and everyone knows it is safer to travel in groups. But then someone pointed out (rather annoyingly at the time) that I could have used the university’s Safewalk service. Why didn’t I think of that? I wrote an article about it earlier on in the year – I knew full well of the free services they offer. Why didn’t I just stop by the security office and ask for someone to walk me to the bus?
I guess the moral my little story is to take advantage of the services (especially the free ones) that the university offers – especially when it comes to safety. Although there are probably not an overwhelmingly large number of students that get pepper sprayed on their way to the bus stop each day, it sure doesn’t hurt to have someone to walk with. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
For more info on safewalk click this link: http://uniter.ca/view/1519.
Discussion
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Sorry to hear about your experience, Courtney.
The thing about safewalk is most people either use it all the time, or not at all. It’s a matter of personality, level-of-fear, confidence, and of course the it-won’t-happen-to-me effect. I’m the latter. You raise an interesting point about a 6:30-9:30 class. What the hell? Probably a slot tailor-made to fit with the prof’s other commitments. But it does raise a safety concern when night classes end at studdered times like that.
– Samuel Swanson in Winnipeg | January 31st 2010 at 7:50pm | Link
