Profane words, sleazy comments, and various pick-up lines are used by men all over the EC campus to “talk” to women.
Although males all over the school ground are heard trying to get the attention of attractive females, one particular area that is infamous for these kinds of actions is called the “jock walk”.
Jock walk is the area that is on the pathway towards the library where many of the football players, as well as some of their friends and other athletes, gather around to socialize.
Grouping together to hang out in between breaks is definitely not a problem, but it becomes a problem when women who walk by this hangout area feel harassed by some of the men standing around.
“Every time I walk by ‘jock walk’ or the ‘jungle’ as some of them like to call it, I hear ‘Hey’ or ‘Come here’ and sometimes they tell me ‘Get off the phone’ because they want me to talk to them,” Britney Duran, business major, said.
Duran said there was even a time when she had to pass jock walk to get to the Admissions Building, and two of the guys that she walked by had followed her all the way to the building and tried to talk to her there.
“When you got maybe 50 or 100 athletes out there and all these good-looking girls are walking by, there’s always going to be a few knuckle heads that are going to say the wrong thing,” coach Featherstone said.
Not just that, but those who do the harassing may not realize that their comments really affect women and make them feel unsafe. They think that the words coming out their mouths might be compliments or admirations towards what they observe.
“At this stage in their life, young women and young men are going to want to flirt with each other, so somebody has to start the conversation,” Featherstone said.
“Now where I draw the line with my kids is don’t be disrespectful, be polite, don’t harass, and don’t touch,” he said.
In order to avoid hearing some of the comments that the men on jock walk make, some women choose not to walk past it, even if they need to use the pathway to get to their class.
Instead of walking through that area, they walk all the way around and take a different route just so they don’t feel like they are being harassed.
“I hate it because I have to make an extra trip by walking all the way around sometimes,” Thuyvu Pham, psychology major, said. “I just don’t want to deal with the guys over there because it’s really just annoying and disturbing.”
School should be a place where people come to learn in order to try to pursue their careers. It shouldn’t be a playground where the men gather together to make the women on campus feel degraded.
“It upsets me because they have absolutely no respect for me or the other girls who they do it to. I just hurry up and get to my class because they just don’t care who you are. They just say what they want to say,” Duran said.
Featherstone said due to the incidents that have happened before, he has told his football players that if they’re hanging out by the library even if they haven’t done anything, they are “guilty by association.”
He said all the coaches try to do the best they can with every new group of athletes that comes but it’s never easy because sometimes the coaches can’t get through to all of them.
“When you have 30 kids, 40 kids, or 100 kids like we have, some of them are going to make mistakes and act like idiots.”