Personally, I have a hard time studying in my dorm. I like going to Parnassus in the art building, the quiet room in Suzzallo, Odegaard, and many other buildings on campus to get into those productive “study vibes”.
The other day in Paccar, however, I was desperately looking for a way out.
As we all know, in order to get into the residence halls, dining halls, buildings after hours or Odegaard Library, you need to show or scan your UW ID. My question is why this isn’t the case for other UW buildings? According to UW’s building policy, the HUB is not considered a public facility. I was not able to find the policies for any other building. However, I have never once been asked to show my husky card at the HUB. Truly, it feels like anyone can walk in at any time. Theoretically, UW’s buildings are public facilities since it is a state-funded institution, but I’m choosing to share my story because I know of the university’s policy against harassment.
Recently, I had an incident with a member of the public while in Paccar that left me feeling uncomfortable.
I had just gotten a coffee and baguette sandwich from Orin’s place (which I highly recommend trying if you haven’t already) when I decided to sit down at a table and begin my MGMT 200 homework for the day.
I was minding my business when a man approached me. I wasn’t alarmed initially, but I started to panic when I saw the man later hide in a corner and sneak glances towards me. He continued to disappear and reappear to ask me questions about myself. It seemed like a friendly interaction at first, but I was concerned by his erratic behavior of wandering around aimlessly, slurred speech and increasingly personal questions. I determined this couldn’t be a student because he appeared much older, had an empty backpack that seemed to be more of a prop than actually useful and didn’t seem to understand any reference I made about UW that students would know. The interaction finally ended when he attempted to ask me out on a date and I stammered a white lie that I had a girlfriend. He scrambled away and I took the opportunity to exit the building and get as far away as possible. I called my parents, warned my friends and moved on, but a few days later I started to think about the experience again.
I attempted to rationalize why this had happened to me out of all the people I was surrounded by in the building. I analyzed what I wore and determined it wasn’t provocative. I thought about how I chose to curl my hair and do my makeup that morning. I thought about how I was friendly in the beginning when he first approached me. That I smiled at him. I even considered the fact that I was sitting alone and could easily be targeted that way, but in the end I came to the conclusion that all these reasons actually meant nothing at all.
My safety felt challenged not because of something I had done, but because of this man’s actions alone. It wasn’t my fault. Nothing about me asked to be harassed. And I think this is a sentiment that should be upheld for a lot of other situations involving harassment, assault, and many illegal crimes. I cannot imagine the weight women and men in much more dangerous situations have to carry because of the narrative that a victim is somehow at fault. The idea that just because we cannot control the actions of others means we must control ours is simply put, a very bad one. We shouldn’t have to limit our beauty, kindness, compassion, etc… for the people who don’t mean well or cause harm.
To be clear, I’m not trying to advocate against campus tours and the opportunity for potential future students to experience our amazing campus, (my own decision was deeply impacted by my ability to tour the campus with a student from the university), but at the same time we should also consider the protection of our current students. I know that we have campus security as a resource, but it’s not a preventative measure. My worry is if I had angered this man would I have been the victim of an unprovoked attack? Been followed or stalked? Forced to share even more personal information because this man caught me in a lie? I simply don’t know, but this added layer of protection would make our campus a safer place. What do you think? Should UW require student and faculty IDs for entrance to every building?