In October of this year, Toronto Metropolitan University publicized a report that someone had been sexually assaulted in the Kerr Hall bathrooms. The feeling that settled in the pit of my stomach was a familiar one. Becoming accustomed to headlines of sexual assaults on university campus shouldn’t be normal. The only way I’ve come to cope with this fear is by compartmentalizing grief and rage. I go to marches; I sign petitions and then the school delivers a bullshit statement. I learn again how to live in a world that makes me feel afraid. Looking at these moments linearly is redundant—to me, memories live in the past, present and future. 

In my graduating year at Western University, more than 30 first-year girls were roofied in residences during orientation week. What followed was traumatizing for my community—university administrators told us their hands were tied because there were no ‘real’ police reports. In this way, they denied what we knew to be true from the witness statements we heard from each other. We stood screaming on University Hill—the same you see in Western’s brochures with its lush green hills and the sturdy castle that sits atop it. Advertising security and safety. But no one heard us. I went to the walk-out—but so did the boy who touched my breast without my consent in a dorm room. I set out to move forward. I was just beginning to feel comfortable again when I saw the security alert from TMU in my inbox. This semester, I taught tutorials in Kerr Hall. I only used the bathroom once. In my mind, the threat of sexual assault is indistinguishable from university campuses. 

Out of fear of jinxing my good ‘luck’, I won’t list the things that haven’t happened. Instead, I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, heard, and felt since I turned eighteen and the boys on campuses started seeing me as a thing to be looked at and prodded and analyzed and dissected without my consent. I feel haunted by this, pursued by the possibility of harm as I walk through campus. These assaults didn’t happen to me, but I was adjacent to them. These threats penetrate every sense of security university life should promise students. The problem is chronic—like a cancer you can’t cut out of the fabric of these institutions. 

***

At eighteen, I left my childhood home and went to university in London, Ontario. I lived in a dorm room; I had a roommate and no personal space. I forgot what it was like to have quiet, peaceful solitude. I wished I could walk around my neighbourhood alone at night to clear my head. Sometimes I think about the fact that I left my door unlocked most nights. I felt safe, but I didn’t have a reason to. I remember attending orientation week seminars, the presenters reminded us that asking for consent is sexy, to always look out for your friends, and make good decisions. I wasn’t worried—I always try to make good decisions.

There are a lot of good and bad memories I associate with dorm rooms, the familiar claustrophobia of a tiny space, the posters I adorned my walls with to tell all these new people exactly who I was. I remember fights—holes in the wall and shattered TVs—but I also remember laughing with my friends on movie nights. I remember the way that a residence building felt safely tucked away from the outside world. In the end, I made some bad decisions. I trusted people I shouldn’t have. I ignored my gut. I went to parties and bars and did things that could have put me at risk. I’m still trying to figure out which of these mistakes are my fault. 

A lot of the fear lives in dorm rooms for me, but rape culture at Western permeated every space I occupied, even ones that should have felt like home. I remember feeling scared in my first house off-campus, a specific bought of paranoia setting in after watching too many true crime documentaries. Victim taglines were all the same—young woman in her early twenties, living alone, attractive, dead. I fit the criteria. Maybe the attractive attribute is subjective, but if I’m going to be murdered, I deserve to be remembered as being sexy too. Ted Bundy was obsessed with the college-age girl. Ripping through sorority houses like a cloud of violence. What’s the difference between a frat guy and a serial killer? Does it matter when they’re both following you home? 

***

Eternity Martis’ memoir They Said This Would be Fun is a collection of personal experiences of sexism and racism on Western’s campus. In her detailing of landmarks in London, I saw the flashes of memories that correlated with my own experience in those spaces. In it she says, “We promise students that university will be the time of their lives,” Martis says, “that they will come to know themselves, and it will be fun…this perceived utopia can also be unbearable and unsafe”. Both things can be true—I’ve had a lot of fun, but I’ve also been deathly afraid at times. After every reported sexual assault, I’ve been paralyzed by anxiety—something I already have in surplus. Then, I put myself back together as the constant threat of danger intrudes on my ability to just live my life without the world attempting to shit in my mouth. 

Western is a well-known party school and some of my scariest memories come from fighting to claim my space in nightlife settings—in clubs and bars that are the breeding ground for machismo and rape-culture. In my time at Western, I became well acquainted with how, as Martis explains, “nightlife is one of the main places young white men try out their privilege and entitlement. In this show of heterosexual dominance, they perform for their other straight friends, harassing and targeting the groups they see as inferior—women, LGBTQ2S+ people, and bodies of colour—to maintain the respect and friendship of other men”. I remember the way boys around me waged their privilege in those spaces, walking around our dorm hallway commenting on Tinder profiles. Saying what they wanted to do to the girls trapped in their phones. When I fought them about it, I was labeled as shrill, or even ‘cunty.’ It was supposed to be fun. A lot of the time it wasn’t. 

***

I went to a frat party. The stranger-danger alarms started to ring when I found out I wasn’t allowed to bring my own booze. The boys who I lived with in residence told me I would be safe because I would be with them. When we arrived, they had two beverage options—beer or sangria. I drank the beer because that was less likely to be roofied. This can be categorized as one of my good decisions. I remembered the sticky floors, the stripping pole in the basement and the guys who circled me and my friends on the dancefloor. A week later, a group of girls we knew told us they think they got roofied at the same frat. I’d say thank god nothing else happened, but god has nothing to do with it. 

Another time, an acquaintance of mine told me that her boyfriend in a frat showed her their ‘camera room’—where they had one brother watch their security cameras to make sure nothing untoward happened. If they saw something suspicious (I’ll let you fill in that gap), they would take their student card and kick them out onto the street. To rape girls at a different frat. In the dark, every one of those houses look the same. 

***

A list of placating statements, to calm the nerves of students: 

1. We are disturbed by the events taking place on campus. 
2. It is concerning that something like this would happen on our campus, and I want to assure our community that we acknowledge and share your concerns. 
3. Gender-based and sexual violence of any kind is not tolerated on our campus. 
4. We will do better, we will continue to listen, we will continue to grow together. 
5. Learning someone has been harmed can profoundly impact our mental, physical, and emotional well-being and contributes to a heightened sense of alert and concern about personal safety. 
6. News of sexual violence occurring anywhere, especially in our community, is very concerning to us all. 
7. Please keep your circles small. Be with friends you trust. Practice good decision making.
8. We are responding—but we need your help. If you see something, say something. 
9. Here is a list of student support services. They can help you.  
10. Don’t walk home alone at night. 

Don’t you know I can’t? They tell me everything I shouldn’t do instead of telling me what they’re doing to stop it. When a sexual assault occurs on campus—regardless of the circumstances—we want our institutions to take a stand and protect us. They often don’t. They hide themselves under the shroud of legal jargon to tell us why their hands are tied. Sexual assault in a university setting is always a possibility, so we’ve learnt to train ourselves to recognize violence before it catches us. Some of us are lucky, others aren’t. 

***

When I returned home from the walk-out, I sat with two of my friends in the car. One was crying but I couldn’t yet, so I told him everything. I told him what it was like to live inside my head. What I thought might happen to me just for walking down the street. We left to clear our heads—it was daylight, and I wasn’t alone, so it was safe to do so. We left what was spoken in the quiet safety of the car. We sat in the park. It was hot. We saw kids playing. It didn’t change the way I felt. We went home. He told me later he threw up after our conversation because he just didn’t know. How could he? One hour in our shoes had made him physically ill and a lifetime in our own had just made us angry. 

Western wanted to leave it behind, so they did. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I started going to therapy to manage the surge of anxiety that washed in around the reports. I came to Toronto Metropolitan intent on building something new for myself—insistent that this place would be everything Western wasn’t. In October, I had to stand in front of my class of twenty-five first years and beg them to never use the bathroom in these buildings, fearing that they would be raped.

The bathroom—a collection of stalls and sinks that are allocated for the irreversible human need to go suddenly became a breeding ground for assault. I called my friend the night before, asking her how am I supposed to face them? She told me to just tell them the truth. So, I did. It shouldn’t have been my responsibility in the first place. 

***

Martis writes, “the possibility that a rape had occurred on campus destroy[s] the assumption that we were entitled to protection in this communal setting”, shattering the sense of security we must rely on to believe that we are safe—that we matter. In these moments, “we expected justice—for that woman and for ourselves, who knew just how easy it was to be raped, beaten, or killed while walking alone at night”. After every assault, we—I—believed that “the school where we chose to study and live would acknowledge it”. While the university institution scrambles to get themselves out of its own mess, the rest of us are left with the knowledge that we aren’t safe here. We entertain equal risk from fellow students and strangers alike. Despite the difference in circumstances, our universities owe us the right to safety. Whether it’s the boy putting a roofie in our drinks or the man breaking into the Kerr Hall bathroom. What I’ve learnt is that regardless, the schools we chose to call home won’t protect us. 

The act of walking on a university campus will always be a risk. While I turn the corner I see the specter of harm in the corner of my eye—purposely elusive to the point where you can’t catch it until it’s grabbing you from behind. Every campus is haunted, the energy thrums with the presence of assault. The buildings stop being structures and turn into faces—the light in their windows mirroring eyes that glow and grin while they swallow us whole. One moment you’re walking to class, the next you’re surrounded by haunted houses with picket fences. 

***

I hope this pisses you off. That you’ll be so angry that either you join me in my grief or threaten to kill me for opening my big fat mouth. Sometimes I think about what our lives might look like if we didn’t have to manage this fear like a persistent fever that has to be sweated out. I try to follow the thread of my memory to root-out the precise moment I stopped being a kid and became a woman. I’m not sure. I don’t know if I made all the right decisions. Or how to fix this. I don’t have any of the answers. 

Here’s what I wish for. 

In an alternate world, I go to two different universities and get my Bachelor of Arts, and my Master’s, respectively. My biggest problem is handing my assignments in by their deadline. My students and I use the bathroom in peace. I go to bars and dance freely and don’t worry about where to put my drink down. I get to drink like a sailor and not fear what might happen to me if I can’t hold myself up—someone will take me home and I’ll sleep it off. We’ll laugh about the hangover later—that’s the only thing that threatens to kill me that day. I wear clothes that make me feel good, letting whatever skin show that feels right depending on my mood. I speak my mind and you listen to me. I go on dates, and I laugh at your jokes because they’re good. I don’t think about saying the wrong thing. I walk around in the nighttime, just me and the stars—and no one tries to hurt me.