No matter how insulated our campus can feel, you may find it hard to ignore St. Louis’ ranking as the number one most dangerous city in America in 2010 – especially with the prevalence of muggings and assaults involving WashU students that occur just on the periphery of school. Unless you want to live like Jake Gyllenhaal in a plastic balloon (à la “Bubble Boy”), then it happens to be impossible to always stay entirely safe. However, after speaking with the Crime Prevention Officer for WashU, Sergeant Mark Glenn, I compiled a list of several important ways you can easily increase your level of safety.
1. Do not walk alone, especially at night. If you must walk alone at night, use commonsense. Avoid alleyways and dark areas. Be alert, which means refrain from listening to Ke$ha on your iPod at full volume. (Once Sergeant Glenn was getting off the subway next to a young woman who was listening to her iPod so loudly that he could hear every word of the song. He decided to conduct a quasi-experiment and see how long he could follow her before she realized. He tailed her for several hundred yards, his body only 3 inches behind hers, before she noticed him.)
Also, talking on your cell phone can be reassuring when you are walking alone, but just make sure you are still paying attention to your surroundings.
2. Lock your doors. This includes your car, dorm room and apartment. Sergeant Glenn insists that if you are not there, then it should be locked. This will also prevent your pesky neighbor from borrowing your new jeans without asking.
3. Do not leave your property lying around. One of the biggest crimes on campus is theft of unsecured property. So as tempting as it may be to leave your laptop upstairs when you go get a latté in Whispers, just slip it in your bag and take it downstairs with you.
4. Take advantage of the safety programs the Police Department offers. There are two popular self-defense programs offered for free on campus. The R.A.D. Program (Rape Aggression Defense for Women and Men) is a twelve-hour long program in which both men and women can learn effective physical self-defense techniques. This includes ways to protect yourself with everyday goods – such as a rolled up magazine, a set of keys, or a textbook. During the informative one-hour program, In Defense of SELF, patrons learn about the mental aspects of self-defense. It is hard for people who have never been in a physical altercation to get in the mindset of self-defense, but Sergeant Glenn urges us to not hesitate to react. “Ninety to 95% of self-defense is in your head,” he explained.
Criminals look for the easiest victim, and you can quickly become an easy victim if you are not paying attention to what is going on around you. So take these pieces of advice to heart and stay alert when you are out and about.
For additional information, check out the WUPD website.
If you are interested in either of the safety programs mentioned previously, email WUPD Sergeant Gwen Patton at Gwendolyn_patton@wustl.edu or Sergeant Glenn at Mark_Glenn@wustl.edu.