A heightened sense of fear has spread over the UW-Madison community, a sentiment administrators acknowledge and students attribute to high-profile crimes that have shocked the campus and its greater community this school year.
""I don't feel safe on campus because in December a girl was abducted on the corner of my block, Carroll and Langdon,"" said UW-Madison sophomore Caitlin Jahnz. The female victim was then driven off campus and raped that night, police say.
""That really scares me because I was walking home that night an hour earlier and it could have been me,"" Jahnz said.
Police say the same man who abducted the woman on Carroll Street—near Jahnz's home—was responsible for a similar crime on Observatory Drive, just steps from sophomore Lauren Dahlin's Lakeshore dorm.
""I definitely feel less safe walking home late at night than I did last year, or even earlier this year,"" Dahlin said. ""I always have places to be late at night, and it is scary.""
Statistics may place UW-Madison's crime levels in the middle of the Big Ten, but students are not bound to the campus area, and crimes affecting students stretch far beyond the campus confines.
""The official federal statistics are not always the best measure of what is happening in the campus community,"" said Dean of Students Lori Berquam. ""They are intended to be a measure of safety on campus and not a measure of safety in the city or town where the campus is located.""
Berquam said she attributes the heightened fear to more concerns about ""crime near campus.""
""When you talk about safety at UW-Madison, it is more than just the campus,"" she said. ""I would say people in Madison are expressing concern about the level of safety in our city. Our campus is certainly a central component of the city.""
Only 7,000 UW-Madison students live in university-owned and managed residence halls, leaving tens of thousands more dispersed throughout Madison.
But even students like Dahlin, living in supervised residence halls, feel unsafe on campus—especially walking to and from the dorms at night.
""I had an exam this Monday that went until 9:30, and I was debating about what to do. I didn't want to wait forever for the bus, so I decided to walk, but I was super jumpy and scared the whole time,"" Dahlin said.
Berquam said this fear is not always a bad thing.
""The reality is that a reasonable amount of fear or caution is an important emotion to maintain a balance with feelings of invincibility that many students also experience,"" she said. ""Our hope is that these emotions will influence students to take appropriate precautions for their own safety and avoid decisions that may place them at greater risk of peril.""
The UW-Madison Police Department has also caught on to the fears brewing within many students.
""We want to know what people are thinking. To a degree, it's good people have that level of awareness,"" said UWPD Lt. Eric Holen.
""Maybe people have gotten into an unrealistic sense of security and then maybe these types of incidences may cause them to change their perception, but we certainly want people to be aware of what's going on and control their environment,"" Holen said.
Berquam recently formed a community-wide think tank to address these concerns. Students, administrators and police are working together to create a possible campus safety office and assemble a safety task force.
But Berquam said UW-Madison is currently at one level of safety, while other universities are at a different threshold.
""Some students would balk at the access levels that some schools have for their students. An example would be all entrances to buildings would be card access—meaning, you would need to use your ID card to gain access to a building,"" she said. ""And only one person would be allowed to enter the building on each card swipe.
""As a campus community, we will need to be willing to ask ourselves if we are willing to go to a higher level of security and what will that mean if we do.""
