Recently there have been many incidences with local people harassing Trinity students on campus, with the most recent event an attack on a close friend of mine. This got me thinking about all of the other events that have happened this year. We have had catcalling, paintball shootings, someone being beaten up at six o’clock coming out of Ferris, and multiple female students being harassed, even physically assaulted. What scares me about these situations is that they seem to be getting more aggressive as time goes on. At this moment in time, I cannot understand why the administration feels that it is a good idea to keep the campus an open one.
Each time we get a Trinity Alert I feel my heart jump because I wonder what else has happened on campus that I have to be aware of. So you can imagine how scared I was when last Saturday a camp officer and Dean knocked on my door asking if my roommate was okay. I had not been made aware of the fact that she had been harassed and physically assaulted earlier that night. This is my roommate, my friend, and she was assaulted while she was walking with another person in the middle of campus. Another student was beaten up coming out of Ferris on at six at night. It is not as though the people are making dangerous choices like walking alone at two in the morning. Students going about their normal activities are being targeted.
Now I understand that Trinity is trying to create a partnership with the community of Hartford, which in theory would be great. However, we can still have outreach into the community like Halloween on Vernon and other programs without leaving the campus open for anyone to be on, especially during the night. In reality, when it gets dark what reason do local people have to be on campus at all? In an ideal world there would be no tension between Trinity and the local community, but in this world there is. This tension is creating danger people are going to get seriously hurt if something does not change.
The administration says that they are combatting these events by hiring more Campus Safety officers, and I will admit that I see more neon across campus than before. But this increase in staff has not deterred delinquent activity. Nothing says that Campo is failing more than the fact that the same group of kids on bicycles committed three incidences in one night. If there are so many new staff members then the issue should have been addressed. We need to have a closed campus because the safety of the students should be Trinity’s number one priority.
We are a small campus and chances are that every person knows someone personally who has been attacked by the locals. I do not want to wake up one day and find out that anyone I know, or anyone else for that matter, has been hurt on campus. It is Trinity’s job to keep the students safe and right now the school is failing miserably. This campus is our home, and we should feel comfortable going about our daily lives. So the question is, how bad do these attacks have to get before the administration takes real steps to keep the students of Trinity safe?
