Status has never been more dangerous to college students than it is today. Rather than indicating privilege and an upper-tier among peers, the status triggers violent crimes.
Each year, the number of students killed in violent confrontation increases. Reports show that college students are increasingly becoming susceptible to attacks that may lead to death.
As such, there is a need to get a few self defense items and learn the basic protection techniques. This article details several self defense tips for college students that will revolutionize their safety.
15 Best Self Defense Tips for College Students
1. Understanding the Risk of Safety
For many years, students have been spending their holidays in particular destinations without considering safety aspects to the same extent they did before.
Today, it is easy for college students to lose focus on self defense measures while locating themselves in dangerous places. While taking a holiday should entail some relaxation and fun, it should also be safe since safety never comes second.
2. Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is about being attentive to what happens around you, even when your attention needs to be focused elsewhere.
It allows a college student to detect a dangerous situation and remain vigilant to avoid getting attacked. When you are fully aware of your surroundings, you identify an attacker before they get the chance to harm you.
For example, if someone is following you or keeps showing up at places where you visit repeatedly during certain hours, this information should trigger immediate attention and caution.
3. Being Prepared
As explained above, humans have innate instincts that help them stay safe even when they are in potentially dangerous situations without knowing it. If something doesn’t feel right, there is usually a good reason and your instincts don’t mislead.
However, some places are simply more dangerous than others, and you must be extra vigilant in such locations. For instance, walking alone at night or parking your car in a secluded place puts you at risk of getting attacked.
You should always buy a few self defense devices such as:
4. Know How to Defend Yourself
Although being prepared is important, it’s not enough to keep yourself safe from criminals who have no moral boundaries. This is especially so if the criminals are armed whereas you have nothing yourself.
Instead of panicking or freezing up during an attack, know how to defend yourself and stay safe until help arrives. You can apply several self-defense techniques depending on the nature of the attack and the weapons used by the assailant.
5. Being Aware of Surroundings
Although situational awareness is key to avoiding dangerous situations, you need to keep checking your surroundings. This is especially important when you are in a crowded place such as a shopping mall because criminals blend easily with innocent people.
If someone grabs your handbag or watch or tries to steal something from your pocket, know how to react immediately since not everyone around is good at heart.
6. Avoiding Risky Places
Places, where there are high levels of crime, are likely to be much more dangerous than others whether you are alone or with friends. While some places might feel uncomfortable at first, your instincts should tell you that the place is unsafe.
When that happens, you should avoid the locations like the plague. For instance, if you sense something off about a certain area even though people around look normal, then it means that criminals could be hiding there waiting for their next victim.
7. Trust Your Intuition
People have untapped innate skills that help them sense danger even if they are not aware of its presence on a conscious level. When you trust your intuition, you tend to act more careful than usual. This helps you avoid dangerous situations with ease since criminals prefer vulnerable people who can’t erect any resistance against their attacks.
8. Avoiding Strangers
Attacks happen when someone gets too compromising around strangers. This is particularly the case where intimacy is involved and you’re locked in a room with a stranger.
Always avoid trusting strangers too fast.
However, there is no reason to be overly paranoid because most people are harmless, unless they show signs of aggression or hostility towards you first. If something doesn’t feel right about a particular person, then avoid him or her as much as possible without provoking a negative reaction.
9. Lock Your Doors
The majority of crimes are committed by a criminal entering a home through an unlocked door. As such, you need to lock your doors whenever you leave a house or an apartment even if you will be gone for just a few minutes.
10. Preventing Car Theft Is Not Enough
Simply parking your car in a well-lit area or using common sense when parking doesn’t prevent vehicle theft as much as it is assumed. While preventing car theft is necessary, you need to be more careful than that to keep yourself and your family safe.
To achieve this, you need to install more security features to your vehicle. Criminals tend to prey on vehicles that have little or no security features such as alarms and heavy locks.
11. Having a Dog
Having a big and aggressive dog in the house especially at night is one of the most effective ways to prevent burglary since many criminals will think twice before entering your home. As such, you shouldn’t hesitate to get a dog since it will save you!
12. Walk in Groups
This applies more to women than men because of the higher number of crimes that are committed against them. You should always walk in groups especially at night, and don’t get separated from your group for whatever reason since it’s the best way to increase your safety when out on the streets.
13. Avoiding Dark Alleys
While criminals might be hiding in plain sight, they prefer dark alleys because there is a good chance that no one will see what’s going on once they make their move or if they use a weapon to harm another person.
The criminal mind is well aware that everyone has heard about crime in schools and parks, which means that people avoid such places as much as possible. But an alley might seem like a safe place until the crime happens and you least expect it.
14. Understanding body language
You might not think that criminals share the same emotions as everyone else because they prefer to remain stoic in public, but there is a good chance that their faces will give them away.
When committing a crime most criminals prefer to avoid detection and are likely to be withdrawn and fishy. For example, if someone looks around suspiciously for no reason or his pupils appear dilated, then don’t hesitate to distance yourself from this person.
15. Opening doors carefully
Criminals always wait somewhere close by with weapons such as knives and guns. As such, you should always be on the lookout and detect anything weird when you get home.
16. Avoiding shortcuts
Criminals love exploiting shortcuts since it saves them time and allows them to remain unseen until it is too late for their victims to do anything about it so stick with well-lit areas whenever possible.
17. Avoid Showing Your Location on Social Media
You might think that posting your location on social media is harmless, but it could lead criminals to your neighborhood if they are looking for easy targets with expensive cars or dogs. Showing too much information about yourself tells them how much money you have or what kind of defense you have in place to protect yourself.
18. Program Your Emergency Contacts
Make sure to always program the phone numbers of all your emergency contacts into your cell phone. You should also keep your phone charged whenever possible so that you can call for help instead of hoping that no one will see you.
Best Self Defense Tips for College Students – Bottom Line
If you’re a college student and wondering how you can protect yourself on campus, then follow the best self defense tips for college students. You should always avoid dark alleys and people who appear to be acting suspiciously since they are looking for easy targets.
You should also take a few self defense lessons and equip yourself with self defense items such as pepper spray, keychains, and tactical pens. This way, you will always be ready for anything that comes your way, and if you come across a criminal, then you will have already taken the first step to defending yourself.