PARK: My mom used to ride her bike about 5-7 miles to school each day in high school. For all of freshman year, she rode an old ten-speeder bike with a big springy seat, so it was really special when her dad bought her a beautiful red racer bike for sophomore year.
But she only got to ride it for about half a year before it was stolen. Someone detached it from the wheel that she’d chained to the bike rack with a cheap lock, and it was gone forever. She was devastated.
Different factors make people prone to threats in different ways. If my mom hadn’t biked to school, for example, her bike couldn’t have gotten stolen.
In the same way, student experiences with safety can change depending on where we live, our demographic background, and how we get around campus. It can also depend on what resources we have access to, or are comfortable using.
Eugene Ngo is a junior at UW and commutes to campus. About a week before I chatted with him about his experiences, his car was broken into on west campus.
NGO: I mean, I’d been parked there for a while. I think I’d been parked there for, since, like, seven-ish, but I came back to my car around ten. And I stayed the night at a friend's place, like at one of my friend’s apartments, and in the morning, around like 9:20-ish, it was already broken into over the night.
PARK: The thief took Ngo’s backpack, which had his laptop, some clothes, and other school-related items, but nothing else. Ngo said he usually likes to drop his backpack off in his car while hanging out with friends or going around campus at night, and has a habit of hiding his belongings so they’re not visible. Unfortunately, though, this time it wasn’t enough.
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Property crimes aren’t uncommon at UW. According to the 2020 University of Washington Police Department Annual Report, UW saw 100 burglaries, 17 motor vehicle thefts, and 591 other thefts, totaling 608 property crimes in all.
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Ngo said the incident has changed how he views safety on campus and made it more of a real possibility to him.
NGO: Before, since nothing had happened before, I didn't really take it all that seriously. But it's - yeah. I mean staying overnight or just commuting in general and staying late at night – it's pretty sketchy.”
PARK: I asked Ngo if he utilizes other safety services offered by UW like Husky NightWalk or NightRide to get around campus. Husky NightWalk is a security guard escort service and Nightride is a shuttle service for members of the UW community that operates when it’s dark out. Ngo said he hasn’t felt the need to, although he does try to walk with other people, avoid keeping both earbuds in, and walk briskly when he’s on his own. But he also acknowledged that not everyone may feel comfortable doing this.
NGO: But I also understand that, like this is definitely something I can do as a guy because it's a lot more safe for me to walk around alone than if I were like a girl or someone else [of a] different identity. So I myself haven’t taken advantage of those services, but I’ve heard of some friends who have.
PARK: For international students, commuting from home isn’t an option. And finding safe housing around UW is a challenge of its own. Vic Bulbon, who is finishing up his first year at UW, is an international student from Thailand and lives in Lander Hall, an on-campus dorm. Bulbon said it can be difficult for students coming from abroad to find desirable on-campus housing because of limited resources to anticipate actual conditions, between university-produced content and YouTube. Finding off-campus housing can be equally difficult.
BULBON: As for off campus housing, of course, there’s barely any video tours and those stuff, and about safety of around each area, you know, you have to go ask different people and sometimes people will give you different answers, because some people would consider “dangerous” to be different.
PARK: Bulbon is also blind, allowing him to experience the noise of the Ave – the street officially known as University Way – in a different way.
BULBON: Does it affect my viewpoint? Maybe not, but you can say it affects [it] because I have a lot of faith in strangers here. You know, the Ave is a funny place. I met, like I said, very weird, screaming people, but I also met some homeless folks that are very helpful, so it's a mixed bag. Yeah, and as someone with a disability, I don't think my experience is necessarily bad.
One example, I remember pretty well as I was walking on the Ave and you know, I was walking near the drop of the sidewalk, because near the walls there are just many obstacles to skirt around. Now, I know what I’m doing, I'm not gonna fall on the streets, but some guy was telling me, "Hey, walk closer to the door, you're very close to the edge" and I appreciate that, those little things I get from time to time and sometimes guys just ask for laundry money and food money and they are not being rude about it, so I give them that. I don’t think it’s scary, at least not to me.
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PARK: Go up the Ave and take a right turn on NE 45th St, and you’re at Greek Row, the series of fraternity and sorority houses right at the edge of campus. The area brings its own safety risks. Jules Yearous is a junior and lives in the sorority Phi Mu.
YEAROUS: Yeah, I mean it's kind of weird, it's like every couple of months, it's like a ton of stuff happens all at once and then we'll have a couple months of silence. But I remember like when I first moved in we had issues with vans going around and playing the creepy ice cream music or babies crying or things like that. And they were all sent out to the group chats making sure that people knew, like don't be walking out alone and things like that. Or we've had some weird men hiding out in places.
PARK: But Yearous’s bunkmate in Phi Mu, Madison Weise, said that she actually feels there’s more security in Greek housing than the UW dorms, where she lived two years ago.
WEISE: It’s also really easy I feel like in the dorms just like letting the door swing open behind you and letting [in] whoever is there behind you. At least in Greek housing you, you kind of know everyone that is in the house, so if someone was like following me up to the house and I knew they didn't live in the house, I wouldn't open the door, and I know other girls in the house wouldn't do that as well.
Also, being in Greek housing, you have like a group chat with everyone you live with so it's really easy to say and announce when there's an emergency or people need to be on the lookout for something. So it's really like quick response times and people can be informed really easily, which I didn't feel that way in the dorms just because UW Alert is just so broad.
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PARK: According to the UW Campus Safety & Emergency Resources web page, UW Alert sends important emergency announcements to members of the UW community via email, text, loudspeakers, website banners, and other means, as needed. It’s another campus service that UW faculty, staff, and students can utilize to stay informed.
Bulbon wondered if the system could be improved, since students do pay attention to the alert notifications.
BULBON: They probably should give more serious, like more thorough description if they can, and like a lot of students are complaining like, the email says "area’s cleared, suspect not found" and they're like "Okay..."
PARK: For Ngo, UW Alert is the quickest and most reliable compared to word of mouth or social media to hear about incidents. Sometimes if he knows people in an area that was the subject of an alert, he’ll reach out.
NGO: If I know of people like in the area or, like, for example, people in dorms or people like in the apartments that are close to the Ave then like I like to reach out and to be like, ‘Oh, yo, like hey, are you okay?’ like that kind of thing.
PARK: With the Ave to the west and Greek Row to the north of campus, most if not all students at UW have to face the possibility of encountering crime or suspicious activity at some time in their college careers. The university offers an abundance of safety services, but whether or not students are inclined to use them is a question with a much less straightforward answer – one that depends on where they live, who they know, and who they are.