The CollegeCandy staff is extending our thoughts to Lauren and her family — and as a college-centric blog we thought we ought to do more than that. While we can’t travel to Indiana to help with the search, we can remind everyone, especially college females, the importance of staying safe on campus.

Yes, you’ve probably heard these before, but it can never hurt to reiterate some safety tips that all college women should follow. Here are five important tips:

Walk With Somebody: It’s so easy to find a friend to walk you home. So do it. Often you don’t want to inconvenience others, but Lauren’s situation is a terrible reminder of why women should always walk in groups.

Walk In Well Lit Areas: It might be tempting to take the short cut home but walking through well-lit and populated areas can keep you safe

Yell For Help: If you are being followed make noise. It can both garner attention to help you and scare off a potential attacker.

Limit Distractions: When walking by yourself, especially at night, resist listening to music and spending time on your phone. This will help you become more alert to your surroundings.

Take A Self Defense Class: These classes teach a variety of different things from how to spot dangerous situations and how to intimidate attackers, to the physical moves that can help save your life.

For more information on the search for Lauren Spierer check for updates on Herald Times Online and the twitter page dedicated to the story. And remember, while you may feel completely safe in your college campus bubble, you’re still living in the real world and need to take real precautions.

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This past Friday

Partygoers watched a fight erupt, which led to the man being thrown out. He returned moments later to the party with a handgun. That is when the gunman, who has yet to be identified, began shooting with no intended target. He proceeded to injure four other party-goers and kill honors student Jessica Moore.

The area in which the party was located, South Clinton Street, is no stranger to bloodshed. With at least five shootings this summer, neighborhood resident Rabu Anderson claims hearing gunshots is not an uncommon occurrence. But the story of this off-campus party turned crime scene is a frightening and tragic reminder that violence of extreme proportions can, and does, occur near and on college campuses.

Whether your campus is located in the middle-of-nowhere or in the middle of a city, it’s important to remember that you are still part of the real world. Oftentimes, the bubble-like atmosphere that so many campuses boast creates a false sense of safety for their students. But it is just that: false.

Drunkenly stumbling home from a party at 2am, leaving the bar with a complete stranger, sassing someone who cut you in line at the keg; such interactions are extremely typical in college and often end safely. However, the best way to stay safe is to try to avoid making yourself vulnerable to such dangers. It can be difficult to remember the realities of the world when surrounded by the glories of Natty Light and frat music. But, as evidenced by this story, they cannot protect you from a gun or violence.

Am I suggesting you live under a rock to stay safe? Definitely not. It’s totally okay to go to parties, dance your life away and stay up all night. But, be smart about it.

Try not to walk alone at night – pick a party-buddy before the night begins or take a taxi if need be. When sporting beer goggles and flirting with a total charmer you know absolutely nothing about, get his number and save any fun for a later date rather than heading back to his apartment that night. If you’re checking out an off-campus party and the sketchy guests make you uncomfortable, it’s not the worst idea to grab your friends and call it a night. Put the numbers for campus security in your phone, just in case you need to use their services. Most campuses offer free shuttles on the weekends that can save you cab money and save you a scary walk home.

College resembles some sort of limbo-esque time before real life begins. The work hard, play hard lifestyle makes our four years feel like a dream. However, that dream can be shattered in a matter of seconds if we don’t keep our eyes open and ourselves safe.

No one should be expected to sit in the library or stare at their dorm room walls every day of the week with their nose in a book. Everyone needs something that helps them unwind, especially on the weekends.

Sometimes finding something to do – especially on a campus where parties are a rare occasion -  is hard. I knew when I signed my life away as a Hollins woman, I was going to be living in Roanoke, Virginia,and that I wouldn’t have a big city as my playground on the weekend. I knew I wasn’t attending a huge state school where fraternity parties are the social factor and that club activities would be endless. As a prospective, I remember asking about the student life on the weekends only to hear the same fib that my fellow peers heard themselves as prospective students: “Don’t worry about it, you will always find something going on.”

Oh, but that is very far from the truth. Options on campus are very bleak. From the first weekend as a first year, I realized as no one was around on the weekends I would have to be entirely responsible for finding something to do Friday and Saturday nights. While not feeling bogged down by having too many social activities planned, I like that Hollins has a sleepy atmosphere (especially for those weekends I need to do a lot of work), but for the most part – I don’t understand why we can’t have some sort of decent entertainment when the weekend rolls around.

The social scene at Hollins on any given weekend can be summed up in three ways:

1) You leave on the weekends

2) You rely on an apartment party or a party hosted by NEFA (a specialty housing dorm)

3) You hope the Student Life/Activity Board has something planned

A huge chunk of the student body leaves on the weekend. Girls carpool for the entire weekend up to Hampden-Sydney, an all male college two hours away and sleep on random futons since making the drive back in one night is out of the question. If Hampden-Sydney isn’t someone’s bag, other colleges like Washington and Lee, Virginia Tech, and Roanoke College can be visited. However, if you don’t know someone who goes to those schools, good luck finding a party or meeting people. What does the rest of the student body do when they leave? They go home! Students who are from Virginia or even close cities in North Carolina find themselves frequently going home because of the lack of campus activities. The only time students make plans to stay is if a formal is happening, which only happens twice a year.

Occasionally an apartment party or a themed party through NEFA will happen, but the frequency of this is rare. Also, these parties aren’t for everyone. Many girls don’t feel comfortable going over to the campus apartments because they don’t fit the cliques that live in many of the apartments. NEFA, a housing dorm for the campus’ artsy folks, throws unique, unforgettable parties, but most of them are not for the faint of heart. What if you just want a small get together? What about a dorm room?

Parties in other dorms do not happen, whatsoever, which can be very frustrating. Say it’s 11pm on Friday and you want to “Just Dance” along with Lady Gaga and your two best friends? Good luck getting through the song before someone calls Campus Safety to complain and a knock from an officer interrupts you. Every hour in all the dorms seems to be quiet hour. Whenever students speak up about the lack of social atmospheres, the Activity Board usually says “We have monthly mixers with a DJ and we invite other schools” to combat the complaints, but it does not suffice when no one actually shows up to the poorly planned and advertised school sponsored parties.

For a small university, Hollins is very diverse in its beliefs and types of students. Regardless of the variety amongst us, I have heard over and over again that not enough is done on the weekends in order to give students something to do. Yes, Hollins shows a movie every weekend in the auditorium and they have a shuttle take students to the mall, movies, and Wal-Mart, but that is not enough. When over half of the campus departs on the weekend to other colleges or home, something more needs to be done. How can a campus have a close-knit community when everyone leaves by 2pm on Friday and returns by 6pm on Sunday?

I am not asking for endless activities on the weekend. I think that students should be responsible for coming up with something to do, but I do believe that the university should endorse a more sociable atmosphere. Whether that means allowing students to have dance parties at reasonable hours without getting campus officers sent up or providing well planned mixers with other colleges, something needs to happen in order to help the social scene from sinking even more than it continues to do so!

In asking for other opinions from students on campus, Hollins sophomore Jennifer Old sums up how actions should be taken on campus to improve the overall weekend situation: “I think people are hesitant about the parties and other social events held on campus. Parties are broken up much more quickly at Hollins and the threat of the Roanoke Police has become very real. As for the social scene outside of the party sphere, I think there should be a community forum every semester. HAB (The Activity Board) should hear the collective desires of the campus and cater to the diverse interests of Hollins women.”

Obviously a social environment is very important to college life. Now tell me, how do you spend your weekends? Do you think your college provides enough entertainment and amusement for students? What do you want more of in your school’s social scene? Dish – I want to hear what I’m missing!

But maybe we should.

Last night a USC student was stabbed and killed after leaving a party on campus. Police are reporting that he got into a screaming fight with another student on the street that quickly escalated. The student, 23 year old Bryan Richard Frost, was stabbed in the chest before the suspect ran off. Frost was rushed to the hospital where he could not be saved.

It goes without saying that just because you are on a college campus, it doesn’t mean you are safe. Please think about this when you head out tonight and this weekend. Do not go home alone, remain aware of your surroundings when you are walking home with others, and do not do anything that might provoke someone to harm you.

Be safe, ladies.