A student can be seen marching through the night in search of her stolen bike. A glimmer shines on the damp pavement —it’s a broken reflector light, possibly that of the missing bicycle. With no trace of anything more, she gives up hope of ever seeing her precious silver-streaked bike again.
With a recent crime wave around student housing, students feel safe but uneasy as the semester ends.
“The semester is coming to an end and there are enough things to worry about other than a petty theft,” Jamie Sisson, a freshman in biology, said. “It’s just a shame that people can’t be respectful of other people’s property.”
When larceny occurs, it becomes just another added piece of stress for the victim. Sisson’s bike was stolen from the bike rack under her apartment, but it is the lack of thoughtful security which is even more shocking to students.
“The way security works around [University Village] makes no sense,” Sisson said. “They will stop people from partying on a weekend for making noise but can’t stop actual crime. It is simply a shame, the matter in which crime is handled.”
A story followed of a student who was ticketed for noise violations as he stampeded around the complex in anger. Not hurting anyone or anything, he came back $50 in debt to City of Raleigh, because he was handling a drunken situation positively and not violently.
When trying to contact Nightwatch Security Inc., the company in charge of handling security at University Village, was unwilling to answer any questions, let alone respond to any individual cases, based on privacy reasons. However, for students to be aware of the potential for crime is where safety begins and crime is potentially stopped.
Fangyuan Chang, a junior in accounting, said she has never had an experience where she needed to use a distress signal device, but thinks protection is the key to a successful escape from danger.
“Being aware of your surroundings is very important. I carry a rape whistle with me for protection,” Chang said. Fortunately, she said she has only used the rape whistle as a dog whistle.
“Being prepared for danger is always the best way of handling sketchy situations,” Sisson said. “They make so many tools for female protection.”
This includes knives, pepper spray, rape whistles, etc; but matters which cannot be anticipated make crimes more dangerous and a pain or stress for the anticipating victim.
Bryan Deitz, a junior in computer engineering, said, “once, my neighbors were locked out of their house, so I had to climb up the side of the porch onto the second floor to let them into their apartment.”
This alone is a scary thought Deitz admitted, that apartments can be so easily intruded, so he suggested that everyone needs to lock their doors and remember their keys, so people don’t have to attempt dangerous pursuits of entrance.
“I was just helping out a neighbor, but it is kind of scary thinking that upper floors have the same risk of being broken into through an unthought of entrance, just as easily as an apartment on the first floor,” Deitz said.
“My neighbor, [who is referred to as] Bruhman, is always going around belligerently,” Sisson said. “This kid breaks glass and lights, but the security never stops him. He makes it dangerous for people walking, but does it constantly without care.”
She wonders if he was the perpetrator of the bike thievery, but nobody will ever know, because once she reported the theft, the security said they’d investigate, and several weeks later there is still not a single word from the investigation, leaving her feeling hopeless about the bike.
As a gentle reminder, in these last few weeks of school, don’t mess with people’s property. Safety is the most important goal— focus on it.
