By Syarifah Hadli

After writing a piece that provoked much attention from various people, I have decided to write about more simple things in life. Well, most of my writings are based on that. Right? Now, how many of us have heard the orang minyak story? I don’t know about it until a good friend of mine, Yee Wen sent me a message yesterday that pretty much serve as a warning to us girls about the rape cases that have been lingering around campus for the past week, without anybody knowing the validity of the story itself.

I mean, orang minyak? I am not being arrogant, but I am skeptical. I mean, if there’s anyone to be blame for the so-called rape cases that is said happening around the campus, orang minyak shouldn’t be blame. A human should be blame. I don’t understand people nowadays. No matter how educated or rich you are, you still believe in mythical things like orang minyak, orang halus, orang ghaib and orang-orang. I mean, hello people?! We are living in the so-called modern Malaysia and still, we have people with this kind of attitude. Believing in something that you yourself do not know of.

Now, on to the serious issue, how can the women population of this campus can feel safe again? We have been bombarded by several rumors, some of them are true, but some of them are fake. 2 weeks ago, my room mate who seems to know every hot gossip in the campus told me a really good bedtime story. She told me about the peeping tom. And quite surprisingly, this time around, the peeping tom is like, unstoppable. He’s been everywhere! From Aman Damai to Bakti Permai, everyone seems to know about this particular peeping tom, but still, why does that lucky bastard get away with his crime every single time. It’s like, this pervert is invincible.

We have a great amount of guards guarding us (or rather, the gate) day and night, rain or shine. But still, we women feel insecure being around campus with this kind of rumors still flits around our ears. It seems like, the dudes in the blue uniform fails to complete his job and task to protect us. I wonder why the h*** they got 2 to 4 guys hanging around the stadium gate every single night, doing nothing. Every time I pass by the guard house usually after midnight, I only saw them sitting on a chair, with a pen on his hands and scribbling something down in a book like it’s really important. I just pass him by. He doesn’t even care. I mean, who can blame the so-called orang minyak (whom I believe is actually, 100% human being. No such thing as orang minyak) for being able to sneak into campus. With guards who are more than happy to doodle in a book rather than making rounds around the whole campus on bike or doing the simplest task, checking out who the heck passed by the darn gate, I believe, orang minyak is here to stay.

Now what can we women do? Our pihak atasan will tell us it’s our fault. Why do girls go out at night? What are you doing at 1am in the morning? Well, if the wireless connection in our rooms are not that sucky, maybe we will not risk our life walking all the way to Istimewa and only remember to find our back home only when the mamaks there started to make strange noises and started to annoy you by staring at what is written on the screen of our laptop. We will not risk ourselves, walking to the DK Foyer from Cahaya Gemilang or Indah Kembara only because we need connection to the internet. Now don’t get me wrong (as most of you always do), I am not saying that that is the only reason for the so-called rape cases (I am using the term ‘so-called’ because I cannot validate the rumors about girls being raped in campus). I am not blaming the sucky internet connection. Some of us go out to hang with our friends and all. And we only want to go home once we finish our third round of teh tarik. Some conservative people might say, girls who are out at night are asking for trouble therefore, they deserve it (getting raped). Is having a social life makes a girl, a slut? I mean, who wants to be raped? Pffftt.. Stop blaming us. We don’t need your opinion, save it for yourself. We need a solution.

So what do we need to do? Stop hanging out with our friends? Stop walking like a pig to Istimewa just so that we can surf the darn internet happily? Stop having a life? What next? Stop getting out of our bed? We need to feel safe. And that kind of protection is lacking these days. We do not feel safe anymore. For instance, I can’t be in peace every time I hit the showers. I kept on looking up and down, right and left, just to make sure there are no hidden cameras that will catch me in the ‘action’ (I often korek hidung in the shower).

So what? Dialogue, now.

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Editor’s note: Have you seen the orang minyak in USM? Do you know him? Do you know of someone who’s “had contact” with this thing? Do you have any idea how we at Kasikampus can get in touch with one? What can I do if I want to turn into orang minyak? Tell us in the section below!