Ugh

Lately, my university has been sending out reports of all the crimes that occur around campus. There have been a few reports of students getting robbed, and the reports always describe the offender as a "black male between 5 and 7 feet tall" or some shit like that -- basically, the description could be any black man. So I've been pissed off because I feel like these reports are useless. We can't avoid these areas, and the descriptions just encourage students to be racist.

Then, we got an e-mail about a rape in the city -- not the suburb where the campus is located, but the actual city, where I live. A female student said that a black man dragged her off the train, took her to his apartment, and raped her.

It was scary to read the report because I take the train by myself all the time. However, the report also didn't make sense because there are employees at every train station. And even at night, trains have multiple passengers getting off at every stop, so it's hard to believe that someone was dragged off the train and nobody noticed.

We just got an e-mail from the university -- apparently the report was false. I don't know if she made up the entire story, or part of the story, or what. But considering that the university is already doing its best to encourage racist fears, it's pretty unconscionable to invent a rape and then claim it was a scary black man.