u/HospitalDecent1222

Hi so as i mentioned in one of my previous posts.

There are a group of mainly hispanic men, that everyday, without fail, are drunk infront of a dunkin in church ave.

One is a registered sex offender on citizen, another frequently tries to lure kids to follow him by pretending he has scooters to give. I had an encounter with him yesterday in which he was asking me to come to him from across the street, and two of the hispanics from dunkin (i think they were them) were following me. (Full story in previous post)

Sometimes they set up full camp and display all of their belongings on two big decor rocks we have, then hang their clothes on poles and lines.

Church ave is a pretty darn busy place, so they tend to pass time by drinking corona and staring down everyone who walks by them. Specifically girls.

Theyve ruined the place, literally ruined it. Alchohol bottles everywhere, trash on the floor, staring like pedophilles.

I feel so uncomfortable walking by, im worried for my sisters too. The neighborhood is pretty conservative muslim and im very western, i grew up muslim but then left.

I don’t wear a hijab, im always wearing shirts instead of long sleeves, i wear wear shorts (a sin in islam) and these men will do everything in their power to stare at my body to judge. Infront of a mosque too like bro what.

It’s so common in this neighborhood ontop of everything else..

For context, i am 15, and 4’11 (F). I am very much visibly a minor without question. There’s no “little adult” possibility on the table. I am clearly a child. 

Anyways, recently. I’ve been experiencing an uprising in uncomfortable situations and being followed twice in the same week. It’s never been like this. 

Heres the situations recently. 

(1) On the R line, a man started rambling to the train about finding jesus in a movie, wakanda forever and how theres no south american representation and so on. 

Everyone was tuned out, no one was listening. It’s weird how he was saying it, he didn’t appsar to be on drugs or alchohol.. he had the exact same cadence as that of of a teacher or professor. 

Then he looks at me specifically,

and says “I know all of what i’m saying is the equivalent as one of your queefs right?”

What..?

Thats a disgusting thing to say to a minor. 

I don’t respond, the train has stalled due to a delay. 

He continues talking about my private parts and just girls in general too, at this point i know i need to be out of here. 

I look at this dude infront of me, a it’s a chubby construction worker and he starts smirking like he’s enjoying it. 

I’m out. I need to leave, so i do as the train has stalled for a while, and the man has turned away. 

When im out, i notice the man has turned back.

And yells BYE. 

Ok..

I have a weird gut feeling to start.. speed walking. 

The direction i’m going has no exit to the mezzanine, so i just speed walk as far as i can, going to my right. 

Then i enter about half a train away from the car i left.

Everyone’s looking at me, i practally dashed in and i look very nervous.

The train has still stalled, and for a couple minutes i think im fine, nothing else has happened. Yay.

And then, i hear someone yell something indistinguishable. Its the same man who was talking to me before. 

Instantly i knew he followed me here.

”YOU JUST SWITCHED TRAIN CARS”

In maybe a millisecond i run to the nearest person, which was a buisness man leaning against the center pole of the car. 

And i urgently tell him. “He’s following me”

The train car has sort of parted, i see so many eyes on me.

Im the only one who talked after the man yelled. 

Now im starting to hyperventilate. 

So the riders are starting to pick up what’s going on.

The business man, without even a second thought grabbed my totebag and sort of pulled me out of the train car and said “let’s go” .

As we leave out of the train car, i turn back, and the man has followed us out, yelling. 

And he asks me which one it is.

Theres two men outside of the train car (one unrelated and in the way between us) 

He can’t tell which one it is but he doesn’t care and we start running. (The direction we go has no exit as we are going the opposite way as the man who came from the left) so we enter another train car before it finally closes. 

Im starting to cry now. He tells me it’s okay and that i did the right thing. Everyone’s looking at us, whats a finance bro doing with a crying teenange girl.  

We leave at the next stop, which is 34th street i think? 

He tells me to look for a cop. (To which there is none), we get out to the mezzanine and he asks me if i need to go to the next stop or if i could get out here. 

I don’t know where this place is, so i need to get on anotber train. We wait untill a couple trains leave, and he makes sure i get on another train in the same car as that of the conductor.

Situation 2 and 3

In the bryant park library, there are some staircases where sometimes it’s desolate and empty. But there’s still cameras.

1st time, i walk past a guy sitting on the steps and he asks me to be his girlfriend, i ignore him and leave. Nothing else, weird but nothing else happened. 

but the second time someones asked me to be their girlfriend on those staircases (common occurrence now i guess??) was this puerto rican guy in his 40’s-50’s. 

Hes walking down the staircase above mine, we make eye contact. 

Then he says “Hey shortie wanna be my girlfriend”

I ignore him and then he’s speed walking down the stairs. Then i start accelerating, he’s going pretty fast. He tells me “No, where are you going?!”

The staircase is crowded the more lower we get, so i ask this guy for help to which he says “idk” to, ok thanks a lot.

I run down to the first floor and i tell a security guard someone’s following me.  He asks me who to which i point at him. 

The man directly comes up to us. The security guard asks why he’s harassing me and that he will call the cops.

The man completely ignores him and tells me i’m a good runner in a weird tone, then leaves out of the library. 

The security guy, thank his soul, told me he could still see him waiting outside of the library and said i should leave through the back exit near the librarians or just stay here and wait.

4th scenario, most recently, (yesterday).

I happened to take a different train that day.  i didn’t mind the fat walk it would take me back home. 

The train station was in sunset park.

As im walking home, i walk past this group of hispanic men and one white man who are standing still.. just doing nothing.

Okay, i walk past them. 

And half a block later, im hearing loud talking.

Im walking past this building that has windows you can’t see through, its just blue and reflective. I look at the reflection to see whos behind me. And i see two of the hispanic guys very very close to me. 

Okayyy.. i start walking a bit faster. I have a gut feeling to turn. So i do, and the direction i’m going is straight into a quiet hasidic neighborhood. 

Then they turn..

hm.

Then i hear something like ”español??!” i think they are talking to me, i turn my head and they are smirking. 

Nope, not doing this. I decide to jaywalk at the halfway mark of the block, and the cars block which direction i go after the jaywalk, they decide to jaywalk exactly where i did. 

Nope nope nope i start running the opposite direction.
They didn’t see the direction i walk.

At the end of the block, is the white guy i saw with them earlier. 

His seems to be talking to me but i didn’t catch it. 

Then i hear he’s warning me about a dog. i say “oh okay” then he leaves down the block.

Then i notice it, a stray dog in front of an auto body shop??

I really love animals, so i stop to pet and let it and call animal control. 

It let’s me, i call 9-11 but there’s no answer and i decline. 

The dog seems to be owned by the auto body shop? But im not so sure.

Then in notice the white man at the end of the block just waiting..

Hm.. 

So i decide not to go that way and take a longer route back home. 

I go outside again a couple hours later to go to a long walk, and outside is a familiar bengali man sitting utop long steps in kensington , i always see him with hispanics drinking alchohol and sleeping the night with them on the benches. They always have their belongings laid out on tree branches and city decoration.

That place has been destroyed and i hate walking past it. They stare at EVERYBODY and make gestures. And it makes me so uncomfortable because its 100% a perverted stare, one of them is on a sex offender list according to citizen. 

Theres a rumour that this man tells kids he has scooters and asks them to come with him.

That was last year, but i still beleive it because he’s extremely weird, he’s always making gestures for people to come to him. And he did so again from ontop of the stairs. I ignore him but he’s repeatedly doing it. So i shake my head and continue walking and turn the block. Then im out of sight from him. 

Ive only been having super weird encounters until recently, it wasn’t so bad last year.. i don’t know what’s going on or why its ranked up. Statistics show the city has actually gotten safer in crime, but minuscule things like these don’t go reported.

how do i protect myself? I can only run well, i cant fight and have never done so. Pepper spray and tasers are illegal for anyone under 18 and if i use it on someone who harasses me ill be the one that goes to jail.. 🫠

It’s so bad that companies don’t even want to hire legitimate paid workers. Rather they offer just the experience of working instead of paying.

So for starters I ”work” unpaid at an extremely wealthy outdoor place, (i need to be super vague), but basically.. we are tour guides, we run games for children that advocate about nature and animals we have there.

We are volunteers basically. We have all the same training as that of an actual employee.

We run stations with games catered around a specific topic, a lot of these stations you need to do physical movements to attract visitors. Like a dance with a prop. Nonstop.

You must have atleast a somewhat smile on your face and you must actively call out to a visitor walking past your station.

“Do you want to learn about ___? Well look no further. We have a fun game you can play about it!”

These games are catered twords children, so you know how that goes..

Chaos. Utter chaos.

We have toss games where there’s 20 balls somehow scattered across everywhere and there’s too many kids reaching for their 60th toss try to retrieve atleast one ball from the floor.

Every action a kid does we must have a reaction.

Missed the toss for the 60th time? For every time they fail we must have atleast something to say.

”Aww, 61st try is the charm!”

Or if a kid ever so slightly touches a prop we must make an educational conversation about it.

Some kids deliberately put their fingers in their mouth before touching our props.

Some kids deliberately steal and the parents have no care at all.

There’s calmer stations where it’s just spinning a wheel and giving memorized questions to answer.

Other ones where you just have a billion props and give a backstory to every one of them.

It’s draining. Having to put on a smile, a jolly face and have a completely perfect answer to absolutely every question anyone asks while juggling 60 kids at once with parents that don’t seem to care about their behaviour.

Theres virtually nobody else assisting us.

We have every single visitor talking to us because theres no one else to talk to.

Theres only two paid workers in the entire place that talk to patrons.

Other than that it’s unpaid teenagers that need to be here for 7+ hours a day for almost a half summer service requirement. With no reward at all.

I guess our uniform counts as a reward. Clothes are expensive in this economy.

It’s absolutely brutal, like even the people who don’t talk much to visitors, are burnt out to the core.

Its so unhealthy, everyone i know of, simply passes out asleep on the subway on the way home because of how draining it is.

This is taking up 1/2 of your summer. Being drained everyday.

And keep in mind they prefer to “hire” teenagers, so that comes with its own.. even more draining drama.

We also have ”leaders” our age, who are volunteers with a stipend of a hundred or two before taxes.

It’s bullshit just to show you have leadership experience on college apps, when in reality these leaders are making the job even more draining by yelling at the regular teenagers to show “leadership” even though none want to follow in their footsteps and be as rude.

Every morning and after shift these “leaders” have a full on speech about what we did wrong. Its just them letting out how drained they are on us.

There’s so much drama about these leaders too.

Particularly about how one doesn’t let you lean or sit down.

We have no stools and are standing for all of the day. Except in our 30 minute break.

But we are still outside for 7 hours on hard ground with no seats.

Our foot pain is unexplainable and it’s hard to walk the distance to the subway to get home, then your feet are aching as you sleep on the train.

Some of us tend to lean on a station we have, and then get yelled at for not being ramrod straight for 7 hours.

We had an EXTENSIVE amount of training.

We had to do state mandated ones too, it took about a month for everyone to complete it because it’s just that time consuming of a training. (Unpaid BTWWW)

Training for virtually every scenario in the book.
Shooter, stalker, angry patron, whatever.

Training for everything a visitor might say or ask.

Training for lost kids, lost items, lost animals.

Training for everything a kid might ask about our games.

Training if a visitor asks a sensitive question.
Maybe about the animals.

The workplace has the lines absolutely shoved down our throat that yes they are treated well. I can’t say much about the animals.

Im not sure if i can even rant about this.

I had a massive document i had to sign that is very strict about what u can say about the organization.

So i’m making sure im not directly naming or hinting about them, because they are a very massive organization , so if i even hint slightly, youd guess it.

I wouldn’t do this if i was paid 18 bucks an hour or 40.

The organization can EASILY hire all of us. They make in butt loads of money with the amount of guests, merch prices, food prices, and many other factors so i don’t understand WHY not hire actual workers.

So basocially, i was born in the US to two bengali parents, we would be considered extremely western compared to other bengali americans. I don’t have a single peice of traditional clothes nor do i have a hijab or prayer mat.. (we are not religious) we also have a dog we walk frequently, because of all this feel socially exiled from the bengali immigrant community i live in. (nyc)

I travelled to dhaka in 2019 and absolutely loved it, i felt really loved by my neighborhood there. It was extremely safe and peaceful. I don’t remember the exact area i lived in, but it wasn’t crowded, and more of like just tall apartments side by side.. so i’d say a nice quiet neighborhood. My grandfather was very affluent and owned a couple apartment buildings. Although the neighborhood wasn’t all too developed, there were open sewers where you could see pits of waste, the streets werent dirty though. We traveled a bit into the even fancier parts of dhaka and it was really advanced! We went to malls and fancy restaurants. I really miss the food.. I remember that i would see construction for an above ground rail system that wasn’t quite built yet. One day me and my dad walked into the slums of dhaka and i have the memory permanently stuck in my head. I’m sure these slums still exist, but recently bangladesh was cleared to be progressing out of the LDC (least developed country) category. So i’m really glad some progress was made. The villages are nicer than the slums, we went into a village that had a massive lake, and everybody went fishing frequently. The village was extremely clean and had lots of animals. I had the best roti and dall, ugh.. i miss it too bad!

I want to visit again next year, for context i am 16,(F) do not have bengali citizenship, and know an acceptable but weak amount of bengali.

I feel like it would be obvious that i wasn’t born there, i dont plan to wear traditional clothes, or hijab.. I’ll just be wearing casual clothes?

Is this socially acceptable?

I’m wondering how safe dhaka is now. As a kid, it felt extremely safe to me, but then again i was with my dad, who’s built like dwane the rock johnson .

Edit: Thank you guys so much for the helpful comments! It means alot!! The ones that relate to the us bengali community make me feel like i’m not the only one experiencing this!

Hey! Im currently going through the application for UWC via USA NC.

Here is what i’ve learned so far, literally just going through the first step of the application, and i feel like writing it out to tell others.

What does it truly mean to be apart of UWC?

You see, i’ve talked to the most amazing alumni from UWC ISAK, and got extremely varying answers.

Thats because, there’s different aspects about a person that impact their opinion.

UWC isnt looking for a picture perfect person.

Because of this, everyone is different.

People from all over the world, with different aspects about themselves. Different backgrounds, different opportunities, different class, different stories and more.

What happens if all of these people come together?

Then, you make something called. UWC.

If UWC was made of picture perfect candidates, then it wouldn’t be what it is.

Earlier, when i was starting to write my essays. I was wondering, “Am i enough? Am i what they want?”

But theres no real answer.

What is being enough for UWC? There’s nothing that makes a selection committee go;

“Your enough.”

For what exactly?

You don’t need a billion leadership experiences to be in UWC. Matter of fact, some alumni had none.

If UWC only selected candidates that were “leaders”, how would that play out?

I’ll demonstrate. Let’s say the leaders are teachers and the non leaders are students.

If UWC selects a class of just teachers, where are the students to learn the knowledge?

But it’s not to say being a leader isnt wanted at UWC.

(I mean in my scenario you kinda do need a teacher for the students, but the students could simply self study the material with the help of each other, so.. i guess i wrote a paradox??)

Thank you for listening to my ramble, best of luck on your applications!