First day of classes kicked my ass.
Starting the school year with a 9 a.m. class was a mistake. I live on Smythe, so the 20-minute walk (I forgot my student ID when I moved up, and had to drop $10 for a new one this afternoon) to school swiftly chopped my eager learning mood.
Campus, as always, is full of semi-familiars. I recognize faces, but we’re too embarrassed to acknowledge our mutual interests in each other, so fleeting glances and stoic peripheral absorption will have to do for another year.
I walked to campus via Montgomery, and for the first time since April, set mine eyes upon the monoliths of brick and mortar, each a great monument to the ever-developing human soul and mind, their walls housing knowledge and those who pursue it, or some shit.
Eight hours of campus-tramping later, knowledge can go fuck itself. From my morning prof dobbling his oh-too-early-in-the-semester stinkeye when I walked in late, to my evening class’s prolonged essay topic-choosing session (no one wanted to say “I’ll take Balzac” for some reason), today was an utter shitshow.
My final class ended early, about 10 minutes to nine, so Gilean (my girlfriend, with whom I share six years of the life relationshipped and this, our fourth year of the same major) and I said goodnight and went our separate ways. She lives in Forest Hill and I, as previously mentioned, live across the globe on Smythe Street.
Ten minutes into my jaunt home, my cell phone rang.
“I waited five minutes outside JDH, and Saferide hasn’t shown up yet,” she said. “Now I’m at the SUB, and it’s still not around.”
UNB’s website says Saferide starts at 7 PM. Gilean waited outside the SUB for another 10 minutes while I retraced my steps down Montgomery and back to campus, to walk her to Dunn’s Crossing. On the way, about 9:15 p.m., we noticed the Saferide van sitting in the new UNB residence building parking lot, and there it stayed, empty, for another five minutes.
We couldn’t wait around for the driver to come out, since it was getting late and we had a date with Mugger’s Trail (now featuring a practically matchbook-sized sign advising students to “travel in groups”; safety second, budgets first?). I lived in Forest Hill last year, so I’ve walked the trail many times, and often at night. Never met a mugger, but I’m not a 120lb woman either, nor will I presumably ever be. But, as an experienced hiker of Assailant Avenue, I tried to reassure Gilean that the (slightly) pushed-back bushes that run along the trail posed no reasonable cover for an attacker.
“Just on the other side of the bushes is a big ravine, and then someone’s backyard,” I said as we walked into the new streetlamps’ pools of light. “It’s probably not meant to make you more comfortable, but to make it more difficult for muggers to hide.
“I still don’t want you walking this alone at night, but it’s not as bad as it was-”
As if on cue (and I’m not shitting you on this; it was like a plot-turn from a Jennifer Love Hewitt horror comic), the light above us snaps out BIZZT!, leaving us in the dark among the rumble of highway traffic.
I’ve been on The Hill for four years now. I know it’s bad PR and all, but can someone actually fix the trail problem? They implemented Saferide, but for us tonight, it was as effective as Stevie Wonder’s Sharpshooter Training DVD.
Yeah, streetlights help, if they stay on. Yeah, cutting the bushes back a few feet means potential attackers might need to sit on a slope while waiting to jump some innocent walker. But hasn’t anyone actually realized there are men (who are most likely, and most unfortunately, on campus) who find it appropriate to attack other humans for cash or a sense of dominance? Is nailing a six-inch sign with 35-point text to a tree really our best effort at attack prevention? Why are we forcing girls to pay for on-campus self-defense courses, and not consoling/supporting those people who’ve been mugged on said trail? I’m down with paying a few bucks more if it means my girlfriend and I don’t need to consider walking home a potentially threatening experience.
So yeah. First day back was kind of a drag. Hopefully yours was better, though if you live(d?) in Forest Hill Towers, the fire might’ve sucked.
