Safety in halls
A realistic Guide to life at UCLan - written by students!
Comments from students...
It’s a good idea to be vigilant at home or in halls. Here’s one Fresher’s experience:
“It’s really bad in our halls. Instead of using your key, we just put the latch on and leave the door open, cause on the ground floor we just go into each other’s flats, so some nights we just forget and leave the lock. This particular night, someone had followed some guys in, gone into my friend’s flat, and absolutely emptied the fridge-freezer. They left them with a pack of frozen peas. It was really bad, because when we looked at the film footage, the guys were drunk and had beer glasses but no one at the flat heard them.”
Another’s presence of mind meant she foiled one would-be intruder:
“One time I went back to my friends place, a man followed us, and he was trying to get in through the bottom door at Whitendale. We’d just shut it and he pushed it and tried to get us to open the door. So we asked him to show us his keys and he ran off. It’s really scary because it does make you think.” This is a good trick if they don’t have keys they probably don’t live there and if they do security can let them in or they can phone their flatmates so don’t feel guilty about not opening doors.
And this student would like to make you aware of one local little trick:
“The local ruffians, on moving in day, like to follow students around the halls and pick up any bags you’ve left lying around. The security team find it really hard to monitor, because they just look like students.”
These are just a few of the personal safety issues you need to be aware of but let us re-assure you that incidents like we have described are rare – mostly because the majority of students are careful.
