On Safety

Forgive me for ranting.

One of Richmond's major safety selling points, at least for my parents, was the Safety Shuttle. Affectionately called "The Raper" by U of R students, the Safety Shuttle was funded by a gift from a Westhampton College alumni to protect girls who were walking home alone at night. It only took girls and ran, by phone call, during nighttime hours and anywhere on campus. It say this in the past tense because Richmond has made some "improvements" to this shuttle.

The first of these was the gender desegregation of the shuttle. Which I can kind of understand when it's understood that the majority of assaults on campus first semester were on guys. I never really had an issue with that, but several of my female friends have admitted to feeling unsafe having guys on the same shuttle that used to guarantee them a safe way home. A friend of mine commented that "someone could get on and follow her off and back to her dorm," which is exactly what the shuttle is supposed to prevent.

The most recent "improvement" is the one I have an issue with. Instead of operating on a call-in basis, the Safety Shuttle now runs on a continuous loop around campus from 7 to 3 every night. At first glance, this sounds phenomenal. However, the Raper now only stops at 15 pre-designated stops on campus. You have to walk from your current location to the nearest stop and wait. For a long time. Then you can get on, but must get off at another pre-assigned stop, whereas you used to be able to get dropped off right at your dorm. This leaves a lot of waiting and a lot of lone walking that the old system prevented.

Then, there's the issue of where these stops are. First of all, good luck knowing. I had no idea until I looked it up online and when I tried to call the old Safety Shuttle hotline number, they did nothing to tell me except to refer me online. Second of all, there are a lot of places on campus that the Shuttle used to hit (like the off-campus but still school-owned houses at Bostwick) that are not a part of the new continuous loop.

I actually felt safer walking home by myself than waiting for the shuttle the other night, and that's precisely the opposite of what the Safety Shuttle is supposed to accomplish.

Hoping someone's listening,
Rachel Leigh

On Why Tumblr Has Ruined My Blogging

I love Tumblr and Facebook. That's not even a question. I am an addict of blogging sites, social networks, and internet phenomena. I don't know how to exist on the internet without deeply entangling myself in a web of internet interactions: message boards, Twitter, etc.

The problem with this addiction, though, is that it hinders my ability to produce original content. On tumblr, the ratio of my original posts to endless reblogs of other people's content is probably 1 in 50. On Facebook and Tumblr alike, when I go to vent, as I often do on here, the thoughts are often reduced to one to two sentence snippets of thoughts, rather than developed, lively writing as I hope people have come to associate with this blog.

And yet, those snippets and snapshots of my life and the small chances to reblog the things I've seen and post a thought I had seem to be enough to lead to a sort of catharsis that leaves me without the urge to write a several paragraph blog post.

I hope, my darling readers, that you haven't forgotten about me. Know that I haven't forgotten about you. I stopped multiple times to post on here, and found that I had forgotten how hard it is to share my perceptions of the world without that handy little "reblog" button.

Luckily, since I'm in college and have to turn out papers (and, oh, hey a blog for one of my classes) on a regular basis, I think I'm getting back into the swing of really fleshing out my thoughts and expanding on them. Even if it is just a large amount of pondering and pontification sometimes.

It's good to be back.

Still Tumbling, Facebook Stalking, and blogging,
Rachel Leigh

Good evening and welcome back to another moderately snarky, slightly pretentious, and pseudo-intellectual post.

I've missed you, my darling readers. I've missed sharing my thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.

College was taking over my life, and my internship over Winter Break didn't really want to share me either. But I'm back! With a vengeance! And...a keyboard!

Lovingly yours,
Rachel Leigh