This past weekend I was in New Orleans for the annual French Quarter Festival: free concerts by the river, $2 beers in the streets (Hurricanes $5), oysters and boiled crawfish, drunken hordes on Bourbon Street, and midnight coffee at Café du Monde. I flew back to Wesleyan Saturday night: student alt. rock bands at the frats, free beer at house parties, Mocon burgers and pad thai, drunken hordes of prefrosh and midnight munchies at Summerfields. Returning north, I faced the baffling realization that I had been safer walking the 2 A.M. streets of New Orleans than the streets of Middletown, CT. Well, not really, but perceptions are everything.
In the most recent data, New Orleans reported 1131.3 violent crimes (murder, rape, assault, robbery) per 100,000 residents while Middletown reported only 105.1 per 100,000 residents. (The national average was 506.1.)1 The average high temperature on April 18 in New Orleans is 79° F, in Middletown it is 60°. Averages can deceive. This past Sunday (April 18) was 73° in New Orleans and 75° in Middletown.2 There were three violent crimes reported in New Orleans that day and seven reported on our campus.3 Yes, averages can deceive.
In the April 20 issue of the Argus, there were several responses to the crimes on campus. They fell into two categories. One type called for increased safety measures on campus, and the other asserted that the crimes were representative incidents of a worldwide aggression epidemic, which, if given enough time, our generation will be able to cure. That may be true, even though 2001: A Space Odyssey taught us that violence has always been as instinctive to Homo sapiens as sex. Perhaps there is another stance yet to be taken.
To what degree are we to blame? These recent crimes (laptop thefts, robberies, assaults) are unnecessary byproducts of a community isolated within a community. We host loud parties on weekends and we prance around Middletown streets drunk and obnoxious. Worst of all, we keep to ourselves.
I live on the corner of Hamlin and William Streets, in Lorise, right across from where the crimes took place, and unfortunately, I pay little attention to my non-Wesleyan neighbors. It’s time for me to change.
In New Orleans I was an outsider in a community yet I was welcomed into it by everyone I met: the late night waiter at café du mont, the street performer playing a saxophone, the cab driver, the streetcar operator, the airport security guard. We must welcome Middletown residents into our community just as they have tried to welcome us into theirs.
Perceptions shape actions yet actions can change perceptions. More fear and moral elitism will only build up the walls and continue to isolate us from the larger community. We can wall ourselves in and wall others out or we can break down the walls, reach out, and make Middletown and Wesleyan one. Then maybe it will be a lot easier living in the Little Easy.
(Endnotes)
1 2001 FBI Uniform Crime Reports
2 http://www.weather.com
3http://www.new-orleans.la.us/home/nopd/
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