When I moved to Memphis, everyone told me it would be a huge adjustment. It was a new part of the country and a new culture, but I was up for the challenge. I knew it would be hard to leave everything I knew and had grown up with behind, but I was ready for a change. Coming from a safe suburb outside of Columbus, Ohio, I am not used to being around a lot of crimes. This is a place where I have to be more cautious in everyday life, where the crime rates are the highest in the country. Up until the night of September 30th, I had felt safe on campus and in Memphis, but now I don’t know if I can say that. The events that happened on the University of Memphis campus that weekend were extremely sad, and opened my eyes up to everything I have been trying to ignore.
On Sunday night, September 30th, I was helping clean the kitchen of my friends’ house when I received a panicked phone call from one of my teammates. She wanted to make sure that I was okay because someone had just been shot on campus and she could not find me around the dorms. At that moment I did not know what to think or do; I just asked the basic questions like who, when, and where. My teammate, Ashley, told me to just stay where I was for the night because she did not feel comfortable with me coming back on campus with everything that was going on. As I hung up the phone, I sat for a moment in disbelief at what I had just heard, than I told the news to my friends at the house. We all put down our mops and rags and looked at each other for a moment before anyone said a word. Everyone was in shock at what I had just said, what had just happened minutes away from us, what had happened on our campus to one of our fellow student-athletes. After a minute or so of silence, we began talking. We seemed to talk about everything from how sad it was, to who would have done such a thing, but the one topic that was constantly directed toward me was being safer on campus and throughout the city.
During points of our talk, I felt as if my friends were my parents because they were constantly telling me I needed to be safer in everything I did. It shows me how much they care about me, and it opened my eyes to the things I was trying to ignore. I understand that this is not Ohio, but at the same time it is hard for me to get out of my normal routines from home. I can’t walk alone anywhere down here and I can’t trust people I don’t know, which is just about everyone. I know there is bad stuff going on all around me, but I seem to have fallen in the same trap as so many other Memphis residents. I know things are rougher down here than in my hometown but like so many other residents here, I have chose to ignore the bad. This cannot be done anymore though. So many lives have been taken and changed by all the crimes and violence in this city it is shocking. We need a leader in this city to step up and make a difference. People need to get off the streets and go to school so they can get an education to get a real job. This would help solve some of the problems. When we have more people with educations, they will become busier with a job, and have less time to spend creating problems throughout the city.
It is a shame that another person had to lose their life to an act of violence. Throughout this sad situation, people all around campus have learned many important things. For the people from out of town, we have learned that we do need to be more conscious about the things going on around us. Hopefully the people from Memphis, and the people from out of town bond together and find a leader to help make a difference. The crime and violence in Memphis needs to stop.