Dear UCPD, BPD, Campus Administration, and Anyone Else Whom This May Concern:
Everyday when I leave my house, I ensure that I have two essential things stowed in my backpack: my wallet and my keys. Now as I’m running out the door, no matter what time of day it is, my roommate shouts, “Don’t forget your pepper spray!”
The red cannister lives permanently in my jacket pocket. When I walk to work in the morning, I run my fingers over the grooves. At night when I hustle home from class, it becomes an extension of my fingers, the safety off and my guard on.
I’m a Bay Area native. I grew up with warning labels plastered on metropolitan areas and cities, but it was customary to living in the area. Oakland was where we watched our surroundings and didn’t talk to strangers. San Francisco is where we held our purses closer to our bodies and zipped our jackets a little higher. Berkeley is where we just ignored the homeless and wore our resting bitch faces like armor. But the threat of danger never stopped us from exploring, and most importantly, from living.
I’m a Bay Area native. And prior to attending Cal, I never once had to wield pepper spray.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that enough is enough. Sexual assault and rape are still concerning epidemics plaguing students. Stabbings, muggings, and attempted abductions have become rampant concerns. Every single day when I log into Facebook, somebody new has posted that they were almost abducted on the Berkeley community’s Free & For Sale page. If it’s not a girl posting about having to run home in fear, it’s a man afraid as he fended off muggers or faced a person wielding a knife. Stabbings were commonly reported outside of my friend’s apartment late at night. An attempted abduction occurred right outside my doorstep in the middle of the afternoon.
I understand that these issues are always prevalent when living in a metropolitan area, but there’s no reason that my friend has to sprint to my house because a suspicious van was parked on the corner. There’s no reason that same friend has to watch me walk home late at night with the “Share My Location” feature on our phones. There’s no reason I have to keep my pepper spray in tow as I speed home late at night after studying in the library, fearful that I won’t make it.
I’m not trying to throw facts in your face, because any Cal student can look in that Free & For Sale page and realize that more alerts are being issued than commodities being sold. They can check their emails and get an update from Nixle or those long-awaited updates from Chancellor Dirks to know that those warnings are merely the tip of the iceberg of the violence and crime that makes me feel less like I’m in college and more like I’m in "The Purge."
I’m merely pleading as a student who witnesses this fear and threat firsthand, to any and all authorities: please help us. I understand that UCPD, BPD, and the UC administration are trying their best. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Parking meters, traffic lights, and underage drinking are all issues that will perpetually need fixing, reprimanding, and improvement. But the lives of those in our community are not expendable. And it’s time to stop treating them as such. Instead, I’m calling on the community: students, professors, administrators, parents, supervisors, politicians, and officers, let’s focus on the wellbeing of those who call Cal home. It’s time to take a stand against sexual assault, rape, abduction, and violence. Because right now, Cal doesn’t really feel like home as we fear leaving our homes at night, opening the door for strangers, or walking in front of the silent shadows lurking in the dark.
It’s up to us to fix it. So please, whoever may be reading this, help us make Cal safe for everyone. Make it the home we know and love. I'm begging you—please let me put down my pepper spray.
Sincerely,
An Infuriated Student
