It was a tragically eventful week on the isthmus. UW-Madison students lost a colleague and friend. We lost Brittany Zimmermann, and no one really knows why. Sometimes the bubble we build around us bursts. And when it bursts, the view of the outside can be shocking.

We work here. We live here. We study, fail and excel here. We surpass and achieve our dreams on this campus, and if we fail in doing so, we make up new ones and try again. Brittany, tragically, will never be able to achieve her dreams, never be able to call Madison home again.

This is our campus, our city, our isthmus, our bubble for the moments in time that we choose to study and live here. Some of us stay, and some of us go, but Madison will always have been our home for a time. Yet since I came here almost four years ago, our safety — and the safety of college campuses in general — has become a maddeningly salient issue.

We are reminded not only of the fragility of our lives, but of the fragility of our security in the wake of tragedies like the ones at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, where packed classrooms were turned into shooting ranges. The seemingly random deaths of students like Ms. Zimmermann, Madison residents like Joel Marino and the spectre of rape that has loomed over our campus for the past several years are terrible reminders of the depravity and depths to which the human experience can sink.

We can hardly call ourselves victims in waiting. Our campus is located in the heart of a mostly peaceful Midwestern San Francisco. This is no war-torn university in Iraq — there are no bullets to dodge on the way to class, no IEDs nestled surreptitiously underneath our walkways. This is no Darfur. We have homes to sleep in, and we can take our safety for granted.

We’ve all lost an unlocked bike, had a window broken in Madison. There are those among us who, while here, have had to suffer the hell that is rape. But we, for the most part, give little consideration to our own safety and security.

Yet, we are one step away from tragedy. One step away from another Virginia Tech, another Northern Illinois, another Brittany Zimmermann.

There are little issues of security and there are big ones. Last Tuesday, when a misguided group of people deemed it necessary to engage isthmus-area car owners in a pitched battle, we saw a dismissible issue of security. There were other more serious crimes with which to be concerned, the MPD insisted. How ominous and prophetic those words seem now after the following day’s murder.

Ms. Zimmermann’s death was a big issue of security, and the city of Madison is taking it personally. City officials insist the perpetrator will be brought to justice.

But crime is best solved in prevention. And prevention, as the city is telling us, can be one locked door away, one more friend walking home with us at night or one less drink at the bar. 

We, as students, can certainly do a better job in minding the collective security of our 

campus. But I would say to the city that prevention could be one more police officer walking down State Street versus driving down it. Prevention could be more sheriffs’ deputies for Dane County. Prevention could be a more noticeable police presence on our campus.

One often sees an MPD or UWPD car on our campus. Yet how often does one see a uniformed police officer simply walking around campus? When I spent last summer in Washington, D.C., police uniforms were as common a sight on the George Washington University campus as the suits, ties and high heels of ambitious young interns. The only time I saw police cars were in the SUV-packed motorcades of heads of state. George Washington University Police and security were ubiquitous. They protected the campus not from the comfort of a squad car, but walking down sidewalks.

The real perpetrators aren’t boisterous underclassmen up too late in the dorms. Yet I have seen more uniforms in the halls of Witte Hall than I have seen walking the sidewalks of Doty Street.

But it seems as each year passes, even as awareness continues to grow, another woman is raped on our campus and even more crimes are committed. We all must do more. For it takes one mind to cause tragedy, but many to prevent it.

Gerald Cox ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.