I’m a UNC Chapel Hill alum. Chapel Hill is not an urban area but these things still happen there too. It’s probably been 20 years ago but a young woman was drunk and fell off the roof of a campus building and died. Then, of course, there was the murder of student body president Eve Carson. And of course there are the school shooting situations, which are terrifying, but not as much of a street smarts situation.
Doesn’t have to be an urban setting for bad stuff to happen.
Not always. Please don’t blame the victims.
Some one fell out of a window and died my D’s freshman year too. I remember that happening on my campus back in the day as well.
When I first joined this site, there was a poster who was also advocating for mandatory bedrails for top bunks after her child sustained a bad head injury falling out of bed.
I do think that having frank and honest discussions about the dangers of being intoxicated is really important.
I said it’s the big takeaway I saw - and it’swhy I started the thread. This person voluntarily put themselves in danger.
Please add your experiences as many have.
Please do not try to know what’s in my head.
I gave a warning for parents to talk to their kids.
I did not say anyone deserved to be harmed.
Good points. We started at least middle school. I think as parents you do your best educating your kids and hope they actually heard your words and hope for the best when they enter college. Checking in on them to make sure they’re alright. Parenting isn’t always easy.
Where is the line between telling someone to take reasonable precautions to lower the risk of crime and blaming the victim for crime?
I think the difference is more about timing. We tell our children to take precautions. But if for some reason, they end up walking alone in the dark and something happens, what another individual does to them is ultimately not their fault. That person is responsible for choosing to commit the crime. That’s how I see it. I don’t think the victim is ever to be blamed honestly.
Agree that it’s never the victim’s fault. But fault doesn’t really matter in these cases, preventing the assault from happening is what matters. It’s the crappy reality.
I agree wholeheartedly.
My point of posting - and I used this quote from the article - was to let parents know to remind their kids - they’re going to be out there and there may be bad people. It’s similar to lessons we used to (maybe still do) teach our kids. Don’t get in a vehicle with a stranger or an Uber without checking the license plate.
Don’t leave your car unlocked on the street.
It’s never the victim’s fault. But hopefully we can prevent someone from becoming a victim.
That was my purpose for posting - and assuming someone’s intent or twisting their intent is also unfair.
The young woman later told police she was downtown when she was approached by Mettal, who offered “to smoke and hang out,” according to the affidavits. She got into Mettal’s vehicle and they left the downtown area.
I understood what you meant. I didn’t think you were blaming anyone. It’s okay to learn from other people’s experiences and take precautions.
We had related talks with both kids (male and female). We had talks about intoxication with both kids.
We talked with ShawD about not putting yourself in bad situations. Shawson went a couple of times to a big multi-day music festival that seems to have an open air drug dispensary attached to it. When ShawD wanted to go with a 5’1" waif of a girl, I said, convince your brother or one of his friends to go with you, but I don’t want two slim, pretty HS girls on their own there. We talked about the risks and she actually understood and was not unhappy. She traveled abroad a couple of times on her own and we talked about which countries were OK to visit and which were more risky. After college, she spent 3 months in SE Asia, but had first been thinking about South America (which I thought would be risky for a solo female).
I got ShawD to take a self-defense class in HS, which she only did with a little push from me. I did not ask ShawSon to do so as he is 6’4", broad-shouldered and probably 210 pounds and, although he is a gentle nerd, he’s probably low on the list of people one would choose to mess with. We also talked with here about calling to let people know she was walking home at night and to check in when when she arrived, which she did. I found apps designed that she could turn on, which would notify people automatically that she was walking home, and that also put a button on the lock screen to call the police or create a panic noise. She didn’t want the app.
When she was a college student studying to be a nurse practitioner, she was asked to be on a panel talking to HS students about consent. She described ways of talking about consent in a natural way. She also talked to them about intoxication and the rules versus reality (although date rape is illegal, it is often very hard to prove after the fact) and that it was much better to rely on your judgment in advance and not the law afterwards (or something like that). She told the group that I made her take a self-defense class and that, in hindsight, she was glad she did.
I also talked with both about getting sick from drinking too much (this was when they probably had not had too much to drink yet). I said that they would likely have a time when they got so drunk they would get sick, but that the mark of a high IQ is that they only do so once.
With both kids, my conversation about sex much earlier than college was short and simple. “Always treat your partner with respect and always use birth control.”
ShawSon’s freshman year orientation had a full day or two of DEI orientation (at the time of Me Too, I think) and especially about consent. I told him to listen but say nothing because as a (white) male, nothing he could say would help and many things could stay with him for the rest of his college career. More generally, I warned my son to try to avoid ambiguous situations so that he was not vulnerable to accusations of date rape or harassment (should go along with “Always treat your partner with respect” but the world is unpredictable).
I read Chanel Miller’s “Know my Name” a few years ago and thought then it should be a book all kids read before heading to college - I found it really powerful. If even for men to learn to be the Swedes (the men that intercepted the attack) and not the attacker, and to understand that sexual assault is something that impacts people forever.
I do not have sons, but have discussed that consent is important, and it should be active and enthusiastic.
A lot of people will hate this one, but I would add - strongly encourage them not to join the Greek System, and if they do to make sure they are aware of the heightened risk of being a victim or perpetuator of sexual assault.
“Research has found that fraternity men are three times more likely to sexually assault a woman than non-affiliated classmates. Additionally, for women in sororities, it was reported that they are 74% more likely to be raped than other college women.” Let’s Get Greek: Sexual Assault Trends Within College Greek Life ~ Making Waves
We live and my kids grew up in a low crime area, but we always kid our best to educate and tell them to be careful and be mindful about how much they drink.
When my daughter was at her undergraduate institution, the joke among the sororities on campus was that the SAE fraternity stood for, “Sexual Assault Expected.”
I really like how you covered these topics with your kids. Side note: I have a husband who is 6’4, broad-shouldered, and a gentle type. I had to lecture him months ago about still expecting that people will be put in their place if he gets mad at them for traffic rudeness or other things, now that he’s in his mid-50s and has a belly. He’s just not intimidating any more! 
The shore town we frequent has signs from this foundation outside bars, to remind people. “SAMI”. https://www.whatsmyname.org/
I live in a college town and have for 30 years. Your kids that get injured or worse are all making the same mistakes:
“That could never happen to me”
So they walk alone. They drink a bit (often a LOT) more than is wise, so all their good judgement is gone. They want “the freshman experience”. They pledge a frat with a bad rep , to fit in. They pick a fight with the first “other” they come across. They underestimate how much drinking goes on and the implicit peer pressure.
They walk into traffic
They fall out of buildings, off roofs, off balconies, out windows. Every. Year.
They prop the dorm door open “just this once” and sleep with their door unlocked.
The rural kids have little situational awareness. The urban kids think this isn’t Chicago or Philly or the Bronx so what could harm them?
The ones who do okay have some common characteristics : a strong sense of who they are, what they want, and where their boundaries are. Parents or adults who have let them make mistakes but are compassionate about it; clear about danger but not paranoid
Another vote for the buddy system.
I know of two recent situations involving alcohol at Midwestern universities where the students froze to death. One was coming home at like 2 or 3 in the morning and was so impaired that he tried to use his access card at the wrong residence hall and couldn’t get in. He sat down outside the dorm, probably waiting for someone to come along and let him in. The temperatures were in the single digits and he wasn’t found until the morning. As a parent, my brain shuts down even trying to contemplate “what if that was my kid?”.
On a slightly different note, before he goes to college my son is required to listen to the chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Talking to Strangers” that talks about blackout levels of intoxication. It’s a heck of a cautionary tale.
I went to college at UCSB (you know, “U Can Study Buzzed”?). More than once during my time there, somebody fell off the cliffs in Isla Vista on Del Playa Rd and met their death at the bottom of the cliff on the beach.
Why? Because it was dark, late at night, and they were too high/drunk to notice that they were too close to the edge.
A few years ago, there was a big uproar over it and people demanded that “we need to do something!” Like install railings. There were already signs up, though, even in the dark ages known as the 90s.
When people drink too much stupid juice or take too much stupid drugs, they’re apt to do stupid stuff. Sometimes, not always, doing stupid stuff can get you really hurt. But sometimes, doing that stupid stuff can end with you being 6’ under.
Honestly, the only thing I can tell my kids is warn them about how to make wise choices. I can warn them of the pros & cons of stupid choices, but at the end of the day, they’ll be the ones who have to make a decision when the time comes. It’s far more than MY parents did, which was to not say a darn thing about anything. Seriously, no information about birth control, responsible alcohol consumption, drugs, safe dating practices, or anything. They didn’t even explain how to balance your checking account. 
By comparison, I’ve already told D24 to double up on birth control and hey, kiddo, before you head off to college, here’s an OB/GYN appointment and you’re going to go on the pill. And here’s your drink cover thingy to take with you to every college party. Here, put the phone # of campus police in the contacts list on your phone, etc., etc.