Natalie Yemenidjian
It was hard to miss the flashing blue lights of the campus emergency call box illuminating the trees under the night sky.
The sounds of a desolate farm road, partnered with the reverberation of trailing footsteps, stirred fear in me as I, a 5-foot woman, walked to my car alone.
My fears are the product of real statistics. In the U.S., on average 35.3 rape incidents occur per 1,000 female students, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice and Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Being the catastrophe that I am, I expected to see blood; I expected to see a look of desperation in someone’s eyes.
Instead, I saw a man peering over the box, looking intently at the red button, calmly pressing it and saying into the speaker, “I can’t find my car.”
Before I could cross the road, a heap of Sheriff’s cruisers surrounded the man.
In an instant I could see the school’s safety resources being abused.
I cannot tell you what fate befell his car, but his misuse of the emergency call box left a lasting impression on me.
The purpose of referring to a situation as an emergency is to insinuate that there is danger present.
If all students pressed that red button every time we forgot where we parked, the Sheriff’s department would need to hire 10 times the amount of cadets they have now.
The emergency call boxes are a necessity on this campus.
If we continue to abuse them, we may tire out the forces that make them useful.
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