The first weeks of the semester are fun. It’s still early enough to ignore the impending workload classes will soon unleash on us.

Parties are thrown and bars are filled as if we are in the middle of a peculiar, 14-day weekend with the only stipulation being attending one or two of those “pointless” classes each day. It’s a fun time and people are enjoying themselves.

It’s important to remember that although many peoples’ idea of fun consists of having a few beers and hanging out with friends, others’ is to assault and rob you while you’re walking home from an otherwise great night.

If you were around last fall and paid attention to campus news, you remember the robberies, beatings and otherwise senseless acts of violence that occurred. For a time, it seemed to be a weekly thing, with another student getting sent to the hospital after a fight over something as trivial as a pizza.

Or another student being surprised and mugged by hooded mystery men described only in terms of approximate heights and whatever they were wearing at the time of the incident.

Here is where the obvious, “silly” things your parents and NIU officials tell you before and upon coming to college come into play.

“Don’t walk home alone at night,” they say, and “always go out with a friend.” For many women, “Carry pepper spray and/or a whistle.”

You get the point, but what you also need to understand is that these are not just formalities the school is required to tell you. You are told these things because they work.

But all the good advice in the world means nothing without common sense. If you feel like a certain situation might be dangerous, it very well could be.

Everyone who’s made it this far in life has shown the capability to use sound judgment.

Just because life is different at college, sound judgment isn’t – so use it.

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