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Do women run up stairs differently than men?
By adamg on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 9:28am
Somebody at Tufts thought so: Behind one building, the university has a set of steps that were supposedly designed to let a woman outrun a male attacker.
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Comments
if the attacker was smart he
if the attacker was smart he would just run in the grass next to the steps.
Why run up?
The campus is up, but that isn't the only thing around.
You can bike down those steps, though ... that might help.
What would be more useful is a police call box and, maybe, some lighting? Surely there are other security measures that don't rely on blanket assumptions of mean measures of anthropometry!
Do they work going down?
Do they work going down?
I like these rape stairs better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_DED-V4Jgs
Sort Of
Being that those BU Rape Stairs is where one jerk tried to sexually assault me, I can say that gravity is a good friend.
I didn't run down them, though. I kicked the sunovabeach down about five or six of them to the next landing.
game, set, match
to Swirly!
This is the most paranoid,
This is the most paranoid, media-induced fear mongering that I have ever heard of. If that campus is so dangerous that they have to design the campus to thwart murderers and rapists I would re-consider attending that university.
Aren't the vast majority of rapes committed by a person known tot he vicitm anyway?
Whit
BU stairs
are actually at Cummington and Blandford streets (not Sherborn as stated in the video). The stairs look a lot more dangerous in the video than in real life, because the video shows a temporary chain-link construction fence at the end of Blandford, which the 'victim' had to walk all the way around. I don't think the fence is still there.
When the Nickelodeon Cinema was still open, the theatre had a sign at the top of the stairs, directing people down then.
That chain link fence was
That chain link fence was there for over a year, but was finally removed last winter.
What those stairs really need is a sound barrier from the highway. A plexiglass one would allow light and stop the terrible noise.
awkward steps indeed
I don't know if they work any better for women, but as a man that went to school at Tufts, I know that those steps are awkward as hell. I never lived on that side of campus, but whenever I happened to be over that way, I'd usually take alternate routes to avoid them. Such a pain.
WPI has them too
There are very similar steps at WPI in Worcester. We would typically just walk next to them, on the grass. In winter, we would find ways to avoid them like you.
Urban Legend
Really, Adam, does that pass the smell test?
This is the classic kind of tale that circulates around universities, where odd features of the built environment tend to acquire explanatory myths - almost always pointing back to some feature of the university that students love to loathe. Among the other problems with this story is the fact that Wren Hall, the building to which the steps lead, was originally built as a dormitory for men in 1965. And, yeah, that engineering students don't get to design the campus.
Looking at the steps, it strikes me as overwhelmingly probable that they are awkwardly spaced both because of the gentle slope of the hill, and because of aesthetic concerns - it allows them to blend into the hillside. Their modernist sweep is typical of 1960s landscape projects, as is their utter impracticability for actual users.
You might well be right
In which case it's interesting how the story keeps getting passed down (at my school, it was that one set of dorms was built so it could be re-used as a motel in case the college failed - and that there was a secret tunnel between the two oldest buildings on campus, neither of which rises to the level of rape steps).
Secret tunnels
I'm with you on that one. I went to the University of Rochester. All of our academic buildings and the library on the main quad were connected underground by tunnels so that you could get between classes without having to go out in the tundra of Rochester, NY in the winter. The main dorm near the library was Susan B Anthony Hall and there was a tunnel or two under that dorm as well that didn't seem to lead anywhere and didn't connect to the main quad tunnels at the Library...or did it? It was rumored that you could go from Susan B to the Library (and thus all the academic quad tunnels)...but *I* never found the way.
Campus tunnels
Almost every academic building at MIT is connected to others by tunnels (or, sometimes, glassed-in bridges over streets). Northeastern University also has an extensive tunnel system, whose layout I found bewildering as an occasional visitor there.
No secret
Those tunnels are winter thoroughfares at MIT ... no secret about them. Some have doors at blind ends that lead to equipment rooms and a few lesser known tunnels - but most of them are in frequent use.
I graduated from NU three
I graduated from NU three years ago and I still have no idea how those tunnels worked, even though I was given an explanation of how to use them on the campus tour. They only went to 35-40% of the campus or so anyway.
The one time I tried to use them, I got lost and ended up closer to my dorm than my classroom building. Which meant that it was a good reason to skip that class that day.
duplicate comment
Oh, now I get it. It's just
Oh, now I get it. It's just a rumor. Guess I should read the posts more carfully. I am sure no one would think to design something with such a silly, far-fetched reasoning behind it.
Whit
College folklore rules
Remember, the 23-story library building at UMass Amherst is sinking because the architects and engineers forgot to take into account the weight of all the books.
And Nostradamus predicted that a horrible mass murder would be committed THIS MONTH at a learning institution, in a dormitory building shaped like an H. Hope your dorm isn't shaped like that!
If the murder does happen and your roommate gets it, don't worry. Simply claim it was a suicide and presto, you get an automatic 4.0 for the rest of the year.
I'd write more but I'm heading out. It's been 20 minutes and the prof hasn't shown up to class yet, so see ya.
Automatic 4.0
What if you live in a suite with four other roommates and one commits suicide? Do the surviving residents of the suite get an automatic 1.0?
Motels used as dorms
I don't know if a dorm has ever been converted to a [hm]otel, but I know of several local occurrences of the opposite transition:
- a former Howard Johnson's motor lodge on Comm Ave, just west of Kenmore Square, is now a BU dorm
- a former Quality Inn on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge is now a Harvard Law School dorm
- a former Hilton/Sheraton/Doubletree (did I miss any?) in downtown Lowell is now a UMass-Lowell dorm
Going back much earlier, I believe MIT's Ashdown House and BU's Myles Standish and Shelton halls are also former hotels.
Oh, sure
Don't forget Myles Standish Hall, formerly the Myles Standish Hotel.
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