It was just another late night getting home from school. Alexa Dredge stepped off the bus with her boyfriend after a long day of studying at Simon Fraser University - but they were not alone.
When they shut the door behind them, the man who had followed them from the stop used his body to try and smash in their front door, hurled aggressive obscenities at them and circled their building until finally the police they called had arrived.
This is only one of many close calls related to being on transit that Dredge has experienced, which is what led her and fellow SFU classmate Katie Nordgren to start Harassment on Translink - a blog dedicated to posting stories from women who have similar, or worse, experiences on a bus or SkyTrain.
"The idea for the project, it's been rattling around for a really long time in our minds, I think," Nordgren told the Burnaby NOW inside SFU's gender, sexuality and women's studies department, which she and Dredge are majoring in, at the Burnaby campus. "Just the experience of riding transit, constantly ... builds up a backlog of these little experiences and the bigger ones that all go together and change the way (we) approach the transit system."
The two students came together and started the blog on Oct. 20 for a women's studies course project to get the ball rolling - expecting a small reaction from friends on social media. However, the blog quickly fell into the media's hands and last week about 10 media outlets interviewed Nordgren and Dredge to talk about harassment on transit lines and what can be done about it. The media flurry led to a snowball in story submissions from both women and men alike.
"We wanted a pretty broad reach and we figured it would take awhile to get the message out and we wanted to get somewhere between 50 and 100 responses, and we thought it would take a couple of months to get there," Nordgren said, noting by the blog's third day on the web it caught the public eye. "Just the short distance from inception, to let's just see what happens, to we can't even keep up with the amount of submissions coming in. We thought maybe we'd put up three a day for two months, but at this point we're putting up 20 a day now."
Dredge said many of the stories posted aren't always recent, but something that happened 10 years ago - but still weighs on the minds of the victims today.
"One thing I'm really pleased with, as well, because we've had our story covered in the media, instead of just inside our social circles in Facebook ... we've been able to reach each demographic that otherwise we might not have been able to reach, which has been really good because we've been getting some stories from older women that we might not have been able to," she added.
The posts are unedited and left raw, and are then coded by the duo, who will analyze the stories down the road. The stories range from violent attacks, to an invasion of privacy, gay bashing, molestation, being engaged in a conversation that makes the person uncomfortable, to having headphones pulled out of a woman's ears so the man can get her attention.
"For the most part, we don't even edit for spelling," Nordgren said. "Bam we put it up and we're trying to do the best we can."
However, since the blog hit the limelight, Nordren and Dredge said they were surprised to receive emails reacting negatively to the blog - saying that the two asking for non-criminal harassment to end is asking too much.
"One thing that resonated with me, is there was a comment where someone said, 'Well, being creepy isn't a crime'; 'these women are being oversensitive," Dredge said. "And I was like, oh my goodness, point completely missed.
The pair agreed that while it's not a crime to be creepy, disrespecting someone's privacy is not OK even if it's not a criminal offence.
"That's the one thing we're trying to point out," Dredge added. "It doesn't have to be criminalized. Somebody hits you. This is assault. Obviously something I can file. I can report. But in cases where it's just being creepy, people don't take it seriously - and that's what we're trying to illuminate. This should not be considered an OK and predictable facet of daily life in public places."
Had the SFU duo waited only a month it would have better coincided with what the Transit Police were about to roll out, according to its spokesperson Anne Drennan.
"We welcome the blog," she said. "It's excellent. It's raised awareness so quickly, so thoroughly because that's what we want to do, is have people talk about this. It's the elephant in the room that nobody talks about, but most people know it happens."
Transit Police were already planning to initiate a campaign to raise awareness on this issue in early December. First, it'll start at English language schools, colleges and universities throughout the Metro Vancouver region, Drennan said. Then in early 2014, Transit Police will release a free smart device application for immediate reporting with information and even photographs of incidents for real-time tracking.
"This will allow people to report information to us in real time, from buses and trains," she added. "We think this will be very beneficial because we'll be able to notify members immediately - wherever these people say they're heading."
When the app is released next spring it will coincide with a system-wide sexual assault awareness campaign, which will be directed towards victims, witnesses, suspects and potential suspects through posters and videos.
As for the SFU students, Drennan said she looks forward to working with them in the future.
"I'm surprised at how quickly it's caught on and how much attention it's gotten, sure," Drennan told the NOW. "But I'm not surprised there's so many stories out there though. We know a lot of people affected by this. We know it happens way too often."
In the meantime, Transit Police hope the blog and campaign will lead to a safer environment aboard TransLink.
"We want to know about every incident so we can follow it up, and hopefully get as many of these suspects off the trains," she said. "We want them to know we're out there."
To read the SFU blog, go to translinkharassment.wordpress.com.
