Column: Safe Rides?

I was on East. It was about 9:30 and given the bad weather, I was hoping the buses were running. After waiting a while, I decided to call Safe Rides. My cold ears were dismayed to hear a recording: "Due to the weather, Safe Rides will be ending services at nine o'clock tonight. If this is an emergency you may call the Duke Police."

"Damn it!" I thought. I was going to have to call the police. I wasn't exactly excited about the prospect of having the police drive me back to West, but it was a ride.

"Don't you have anyone you could stay with on East?" the police dispatcher asked me. I ran through the few first-year students I knew. In my panic it was a smattering of first names and no one I thought I could ask to take me in for a night.

"No," I said and added, "My card doesn't even work for these dorms. I am all alone outside and I need to get back to West. I don't feel safe outside and I have nowhere to go." My voice was beginning to waver as I spoke into the phone outside Aycock.

"Well, I am not sure if we have an officer available who isn't already on an emergency call, but we will try to send someone over when we can."

The police car arrived soon. I walked toward it with a joy I usually reserve for friends who suddenly appear and give me rides.

The dark window rolled down and a balding white head appeared. "Are you the one who called for a ride?"

"Ya, I called, thanks so much for coming out."

"I live on West, I would like to go home." I was trying desperately to claim some kind of assertive power even as I sat beside two men with guns.

"People are walking home tonight," one of the officers said. "They don't live on East!"

"You want me to walk home tonight?" my voice was falling into emotion and I couldn't pick it back up. It was almost ten o'clock and the night was nothing more than snow, ice and quiet.

"This is not an unsafe situation." They angrily repeated. We continued to argue. I was fighting for my safe return home.

"Will you take me home?" I asked, tears running down my cheeks. No response. "I would like to go home." The disgruntled police officer reluctantly decided to take me back to West.

As a white woman, I am in the best possible situation to interact with police. And as a Duke student, I am worth something.

"Imagine if you were a black woman in Durham and called the police," my mother reminded me when I called her late that night. "You are a white Duke student and they treated you like shit."

I hate to think of what some police do to those less privileged than myself. No, I know and I have heard the stories. Only now I have felt their power and trembled in its presence.

I know I am not alone in my experience. I have heard stories of Safe Ride drivers who refuse to take non-Duke passengers, leaving young women to walk alone at four in the morning. I bet some young women walked home alone last night. I hope they were safe.

To their credit, when I called the Duke University Police Department later that night I was assured I could file a complaint and that these officers didn't follow standard procedure by telling me to walk home. But what about the police? What are they protecting? Why didn't I feel safe with them?

And what about Duke? Why were the buses and Safe Rides cancelled without any student notification? A campus-wide email could have alerted me to the situation and I could have hurried to get home. Both the administration and the Duke police are responsible for student safety. Both failed me Monday night.

Bridget Newman is a Trinity sophomore. Her column appears every third Wednesday.