Campus safety / women's safety

Geez. Went through a HUGE scare tonight that one of our law students had been kidnapped, tortured, raped, beaten, and then left bound, gagged, and blindfolded in one of the law center's bathrooms after spending 5-6 hours with four assailants. Turns out—none of that was true, and that it was just a "personal crisis" (whatever that means—she was still found in the law center bathroom). None of us know how exactly that terrifying story came to be then, but we're all glad that none of it actually happened (although we are still kind of mad at the administration for not sending out an email at least acknowledging our concerns HOURS ago...).

But hours before we all found out what seems to be the actual story, I cried the whole way home from school (after being walked out to my car by a couple of male classmates around 9pm). I cried for that girl and what (I thought) she must have gone through for hours at the hands of four assailants. But mostly, I cried in apology to our Creator for mankind's depravity in this world. To be fair, I was probably also crying for Paris, and Beirut, and Kenya, and even the Tiananmen Square Massacre (okay I know that may seem random, but I had asked my dad today to tell me the story of how we got to America in detail, and so he shared with me all the photos he took of the student protests in Tiananmen in 1989, right before the massacre on June 4th).

Though we found out that the story was not what we thought, it painted in vivid detail what virtually all the girls I know fear here on campus. Due to several security alerts about crimes on campus throughout every semester, most of us don't feel safe on campus after dark. Most of us fear being raped. If I'm walking to my car by myself after dark, I'm constantly looking around to see if I'm being followed. I'm the most anxious right before getting into my car, because I'm spending extra time putting my backpack into the backseat, and I'm scared of someone hiding underneath my car, or coming out from behind something I didn't see. Regardless of how plausible these fears are, we have them.

I wonder how many men realize the fear and pressure women are under—mostly due to the fear of being raped. I wonder how many men realize that they are instrumental in protecting us. (I was especially grateful tonight to a guy I didn't even really know, but who asked two other guys to walk a friend and me out to our cars. At that point, we all still thought there were four rapists/assailants loose.)

And I was especially reminded of all the victims of sex trafficking. And those girls that were gang-raped in India. For them, this is the reality. The shock of a perfectly normal day gone unbelievably wrong. It's debilitating to imagine.

So though we are all glad nothing as terrifying as we thought happened has happened, there is still much to pray for.