Every now and then, we students get the dreaded “security alert” in our inboxes which describes to us some variation of the following perp: male, 20-25 years old, 5’7” to 6’ tall, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants.
He will have, at some point, attempted to rob a Case Western Reserve University student or person who lives near the campus. The area will be searched afterwards with no success.
While we do live in an urban area, we are no Gotham, and we have no Batman about to leap off the Seidman Cancer Center to come to our rescue. On another note, feel free to add that to the many CWRU memes I’ve seen on Facebook recently.
It’s a campus tragedy when a security alert happens. I’ll be the first in line to say that getting robbed on a college campus would suck, and would definitely be traumatizing to any sane individual. But you know what’s even more tragic? When some jack*** makes up a security alert by lying to the police, for whatever reason (read: some snowflake needed some attention). There is no reason to lie to campus security. It sends a “cry wolf” mentality to the rest of the community and further clogs my already overflowing inbox.
The police at CWRU do a great job acting as a deterrent, but when you make up that you’ve been robbed, all that does is decrease the efficiency of the people who work hard to make sure robbers actually get caught, even if the student population never hears about it. As much as I’d like to hear all the gossip about the fact that the man described above is actually a red-headed 14-year-old girl, I’m glad that CWRU police have more important things to do than give us gossip.
Sometimes awful things happen: you get a bad grade or the cable goes out. Instead of wandering around unlit areas of Cleveland in the middle of the night, go take a nap or something. And if you have to work after those crappy things happen, take precautions and use SafeRide. Don’t make up a story for a security alert.
I would like to take a moment to lecture everyone, so pay close attention. If you are a victim of an attempted anything on the CWRU campus, report it immediately to 216-368-3333. If you are just making stuff up to get on the scanner, slam your head in a door to stop that impulse. If you think reporting a crime will somehow get you off the hook for a test or replace the laptop that you yourself lost, think again. Crimes at CWRU, while they more than occasionally go unsolved, can at least be determined quickly as fraudulent or not. Liars will not get away with it, over Officer Mark’s body.