Creepers don’t belong on campus

It's hard to be too concerned about personal safety in a cozy little town like Ottawa, let alone a small university like OU, but sometimes trouble happens where you least suspect it.

To be fair, I do not fear for my life on campus, nor do I ever worry campus security or other students won't come to my aid if I cross paths with a serial killer during one of my late nights at the library.

However, I am frustrated when I see people who are clearly not affiliated with OU in any way using university services like computers and printers when there are faculty and students waiting in line to print off assignments.

My stance is, if you don't work here or pay to take classes here, then you shouldn't be here unless you are a guest of somebody from OU.

Case in point, I see a kid in the Vera Wise computer lab standing around doing nothing. He looks like he is in high school and he's wearing a trench coat.

I notice him, but ignore his presence for about a half hour until he walks up and, pointing to a locked room asks, "Can you let me in there?"

I'm confused.

"What do you need in there for?" I ask.

"I need to do some stuff."

At this point I'm even more confused. What kind of stuff does this guy possibly need to do in a locked room on campus? It doesn't help his case that, not only do I personally not recognize him, but he doesn't even look like a college student.

I ask him if he's a student at OU, when he replies "no", I tell him he should go somewhere else to do stuff.

A couple hours later I notice he's still loitering around. By now he has upgraded from a minor nuisance to a legitimate concern.

I called security and in a matter of minutes the teenager is escorted out of the building.

At the time it didn't seem like a big deal, but looking back I'm less concerned about what the creep was doing on campus and more concerned about why it took me so long to call security. Over and over we hear stories of people observing inconsistencies but never reporting them.

I'm not trying make us all paranoid grandmothers under the pretense of ‘awareness', but the fact remains: if you can prevent something bad from happening, don't be afraid to speak out.

Especially when it comes to safety.