At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16, 2012, I was standing at the corner of Foster and Sheridan at the crosswalk right in front of Kellogg. I saw a car hit a pedestrian, sending the NU student and fellow Plexian flying up in the air and crashing down onto the asphalt. The driver only just stopped fast enough to keep from running her over.

I was standing fewer than two feet away, and he almost hit me, too. Suffice it to say that I was shaking and upset. One of my friends told me that I was in shock because my hands couldn’t stop shaking, my heart was beating too fast and I was barely choking back tears.  A few bystanders and I rushed to help the injured (but thankfully alive) girl and waited with her until the ambulances came. Someone remembered to retrieve one of her shoes from the middle of the street and put it in her book bag for her. Then I was interrogated by the cops who came by. I was a witness. I gave a statement.

I was traumatized. I needed help and Northwestern failed me.

Northwestern’s “after hours” CAPS call service redirects you to what sounds like a Burger King drive-thru at 1 a.m. – bored, disaffected, somewhat unintelligible. The bottom line, though, was “we can’t actually help you unless it’s a weekday between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Call the cops if something’s really, really terrible or urgent.” What good is a call number if there’s no one there, and what good is CAPS if it takes weeks to see someone?

Thankfully, because I had a network of good friends who came to my aid when I needed it, (I think) I eventually got past the shock and guilt and fear after a few days. I had thought about going to CAPS the next morning, but after trying—quite unsuccessfully—to get help for a semi-suicidal friend during my freshmen year, I figured I would probably get as much help as I had the night before. The only support I got came from my friends, who didn’t know what to do except hug me, and my Rabbi, who actually has training to deal with such situations.

Rabbi Klein from the Chabad House was there for me. He called me, talked me through a lot of what I was feeling, and offered any help he could give. It meant a lot, it helped and it was what I had expected from CAPS and Northwestern. We need more people and counselors like him, instead of disaffiliating from them. Students at Northwestern should have people available to them — not a mumbled, apathetic call center — when they need it, because, as we have sadly seen, many Wildcats are in need of such services.

Emily Davidson, Weinberg senior