Any student who has ever toured the University of Idaho has heard either a tour guide or faculty give a speech about how safe the Idaho campus is.
They will go out of their way to assure the parents that students are safe and detail the safety procedures in place. UI wants parents to leave campus happy and assured their kid will not be the next headline in a college campus horror story. Most importantly, students are supposed to feel safe at their new home away from home.
College is an exciting chapter of life for many students — it is new, exhilarating and a chance to write a new chapter. Yet on the flip side, starting a new life in college essentially stirs up a number of fears and paranoias that may not have existed before.
Few kids are spared from the cautionary horror stories friends and family like to share right before departure. They say, “Congratulations, just make sure you don’t walk anywhere by yourself,” and, “You will do great, but sexual assault is a real issue on most college campuses.”
While there are endless warnings of the dangers of parties and alcohol, there are also significant gaps in the tales. Yes, be smart at parties and with alcohol. Yes, walking around campus alone at night is probably a bad idea.
What is missing from all of this is theft.
The most that is said is, “Don’t leave your doors unlocked when you leave your room,” and “Make sure to get a bike lock if you bring a bike.”
If most students are like me, you buy a bike lock and try to be consistent about locking your dorm room door. As easy as it is to believe dorm rooms are a safe space, that is not always the reality. It is not challenging to keep your possessions protected from the outside world. What is not so simple is protecting yourself and your stuff from the threat on the inside: roommates.
UI is ranked “about average” in regard to campus crime. According to College Factual, only 3.1 percent of crime is aggravated assault with only one incident. Forcible sexual assault has six reported incidents at 18.8 percent of all crime on campus followed by motor vehicle theft at 6.3 percent. The rest: burglary. Burglary makes up 71. 9 percent of crimes on campus with 23 reported incidences — and that is just what is reported.
Burglary and theft may not seem like a big deal on the grand scale of crime. A year ago, I wouldn’t have batted an eye at the thought. Now that I am part of that statistic, it doesn’t feel so minor.
When I moved into the dorms, I was excited. I had been talking to my roommate all summer and I was confident I was moving in with someone who would be more than just my roommate but a friend as well. However, it didn’t last long.
I started to notice some of my clothes missing and coincidentally enough, she happened to have the same things I was missing. I didn’t want to place blame but I wanted my clothes back. I casually asked several times but the only response I ever got was, “no.”
Still, my drawers became more and more empty. As this happened she iced me out, acting as if I had committed the worst offense in the world. I was suddenly living in a room where I felt as if I was constantly walking on eggshells.
I decided to move to the other side of the room in hopes that it would resolve the problem that I couldn’t identify. My clothes continued to go missing.
Her disdain for me wasn’t a secret but my naive assumption was that she would step down once I was not living in “her” space. Once again, I was wrong. My room was supposed to be my safe space, yet I felt safer walking around campus alone at night than I did in a room with her.
Nothing felt safe. My clothes disappeared in heaps, and then she took it a step further. School papers on my desk would disappear and my texts on my laptop were no longer private.
I took all the steps I could think of. I initially tried asking her, I talked to the resident assistant, I put up a worthless security camera and I talked to housing before ultimately going to the Moscow Police Department. I felt forced to be “that girl” who turned her suitemate into the police, but after losing hundreds of dollars worth of my possessions I was left with no other choice.
Moving in with someone can inherently imply trust. Kids are new to campus knowing no one and need someone around to trust. Who better than the person sharing the room? It is just too easy to do.
Regardless of the relationship between roommates, there are certain precautions that should be taken. According to the Allstate Blog, the best options are to mark your stuff and take pictures of big-ticket items, such as electronics, to ensure they can be identified should they be stolen.
This is all good advice, but it is not enough. No one tells you to be weary of the person you live with — trust is just expected. The best tip I wish I knew came from PennLive: trust no one.
I move forward with my life knowing several of my favorite things will never be mine again.
Despite everything, I owe her a thank you — a thank you for teaching me how to protect myself and reassuring my belief in what goes around comes around.
Meredith Spelbring can be reached at [email protected]