I'd like to tell you all a little story. I'll preface my tale with this: Previously, I thought of myself as a tough girl. I don't scare easily; other girls scream about spiders, and that's more frightening to me than any arachnid.
Anyway, it was 5 a.m. Friday morning, and, as any normal college student would be, I was fast asleep. Cut to the sounds of someone jiggling the door handle furiously at the back of my University Heights apartment.
I bolt straight out of bed, thoughts of rapists and murderers flashing through my mind, throw on a robe, and timidly peer out of my bedroom door. I grab the nearest blunt object - my Norton Shakespeare - and venture into the kitchen.
Narrowly missing the coffee maker precariously balanced atop what I call the "counter space" - a wooden stool that is missing two of its supports and lists to one side when the coffee pot is full - I start toward my roommate Kim's bedroom.
By this point I am terrified and convinced that I am going to die within the next eight minutes. I wonder if my surviving roommates will get to split my portion of the security deposit after my untimely demise.
Kim, the logical half of our duo, calms me down, checks our deadbolt locks, and reminds me that our third roommate had to work early. What I heard was No. 3 fumbling with a sticky lock. Wow, I feel stupid. Ew, was that a spider?
Trying to catch my breath, and still clutching my Shakespeare book - what was I going to do with my Shakespeare book, read him selections from Hamlet until he decided to leave? - I realized that the visit from my imaginary intruder brings up a good point.
I was scared because that is something that could happen. I wasn't hiding under the covers because of alien abductions. My predator was real, or at least could have been.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a column about the dump that is my apartment, the tiny little space I love more than anything. I believe I called it "bohemian."
Since then, there have been three shootings, a handful of muggings and a large portion of the ceiling over my bed rotted away and fell on me.
By "bohemian," I meant riddled with crime and ruin.
So, why are the Heights suddenly fodder for Buffalo police blotters? The crime frequency seems to have increased dramatically this year. Roommate No. 4 lived on Merrimac a couple years ago, and although my car's passenger side mirror was stolen during one visit to her place, I never felt like there was any danger. I was never scared to walk to my car by myself.
Now I feel unsafe in my house alone, even with all three locks bolted up.
There was a town meeting a couple weeks ago, in Amherst, or Buffalo or whatever hamlet on whose line the Heights squats; it was the talk of my apartment for a few days.
A group of 50 residents from the Heights, not students but real residents, gathered to protest UB kids living in the Heights. Too many parties, too much noise, they said, or at least that was the impression that I got from the snippets on the news and in the paper.
I understand their concerns, believe me, I do. My street is an altar to red plastic cups that have fallen in the line of duty. The firecrackers at 4 a.m., the screeching tires and the parties are not only annoying, but also displays of the immaturity of UB's students.
Apparently, safety was not high ranking on the list of topics discussed at the town meeting, although for me, and undoubtedly a lot of other Heights residents, it's the topic that I want at the forefront. I want to know what is going to be done to make the Heights a safer community.
The problem might lie in the police jurisdiction; an area with overlapping police districts - University Police and the Buffalo Police Department - too often goes ignored. It slips through the cracks, and for the most part, students are not vocal enough about the issues to speak up.
Or maybe UB students are too busy stealing car mirrors and holding up people at gunpoint to care about said issues. As I understand, for the 50 residents at the town meeting, there was a single person there to speak from the student perspective.
If several hundred UB students live in the Heights, the safety problem might be with the university, who although they pass out door hangers, seem to be doing very little to acknowledge the growing crime rate in the area and even less to solve the problem.
Maybe there are too many kids who are looking for the attention of television cameras; maybe there are too many people with too much free time and too little education.
Truthfully, I don't know how to answer these problems; I don't even know whom to blame. But I do know that I just bought a fourth lock for my door, and I'm keeping a copy of Hamlet beside my bed for protection.
