AUSTIN, Texas — More students are returning to Austin for the start of the school year at the University of Texas. But that return also means more encounters with the unhoused population in West Campus.
On Wednesday, the UT Austin Police Department (UTPD) sent out an advisory saying that with sorority and fraternity recruitment underway, the department has been seeing an increase in incidents with the unhoused population acting inappropriately or suspiciously.
SafeHorns, an organization dedicated to advocating for safety in West Campus, also said every year, sorority recruitment tends to bring a lot more unhoused people to the area.
“Unfortunately, now that we have a lot of female students coming to participate in recruitment for Greek life, they know and they see the girls walking about,” said Joell McNew, the president of SafeHorns.
This year, SafeHorns said starting on Wednesday, they have already been hearing from potential new sorority members – also called PNMs – who say they have witnessed lewd behavior, been harassed and even been chased by unhoused people as they were walking to the sorority houses.
“It’s disgusting," McNew said. "It shouldn’t be the norm, and we shouldn’t be desensitized to that."
UT sophomore Alexandra Skinner is one of the young women who has already had an experience like this.
“We were walking by, and he was across the street, you know, and he just started yelling at us as we were walking by,” Skinner said. “We’re walking alone and stuff, so it’s scary.”
The layout of UT’s sorority houses throughout West Campus also presents an extra safety challenge compared to other schools, where all the sorority and fraternity houses are on one street or row.
“They are very spread out,” McNew said. “The PNMs, potential new members, [are] navigating their way, trying to find, you know, these different locations and [they] may not be familiar with Austin.”
During sorority recruitment, PNMs will get called back to different houses and may have different schedules than their friends or roommates – meaning that many times, they'll have to walk around West Campus alone.
As a sophomore, Skinner said she is already familiar with the unhoused population in West Campus, but she does have some concerns about walking around alone late at night.
“I do have a house that ends at 9 [p.m.] today, so I’m going to be out late tonight," she said. "So it is something that is a bit of a concern."
In its advisory, UTPD said it has added extra officers and West Campus Ambassadors to patrol the area during this time.
When students call the West Campus Ambassadors, two ambassadors will meet the students and escort them to safety, anytime from 7 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. The group's phone number is 512-429-3278, and SafeHorns recommends that every student save that number in their phone.
UTPD also has an app called LiveSafe, where students can text officers, receive safety alerts, call 911 and even have anyone from their contacts track their location while they're walking. The app also allows students to report suspicious activity and incidents.
“They need to be situationally aware that they need to report and not assume someone else has reported,” McNew said.