My earliest experience with police was in a classroom setting. “Officer D.A.R.E” lectured a classroom filled with my 8-year old peers and I on stranger danger, just saying no, and the danger of alcohol and drugs. I grew up in middle-to-upper class suburb of Pennsylvania best characterized by white picket fences and the children of white flight. I consistently saw this same police officer growing up and it was a bit of a shock seeing anyone else in blue in my town, which I don’t remember happening until high school (a younger officer walking around on Halloween).

When traveling, my interactions with police have always tended nearly comically towards benefit of the doubt, sometimes in dark contrast with those around me. I am female, visibly white, petite, articulate, wear glasses, walk with confidence, and tend to dress in collared shirts and vests. It would be a genuine challenge to appeal to societal biases and the police officers urge to protect a perceived vulnerable target more than I already do. I have never received a glare or warning at a protest, even when those around me have for identical actions. I have never been approached for loitering when waiting with backpacking gear even when my equally disheveled friends have. It is hard to list all the similar fringe examples, simply because I never noticed at the time. I have never been warned off for eating or yelling in a hotel, even when friends complain about the uptightness of security in a hotel. Airport security over the years I have been waved through with a kind warning for accidentally (sometimes accidentally) bringing in my carry-on: food, flint-and-tinder, a decomposing ram’s horn, a bottle of wine, wire cutters, a Swiss army knife, and water.

My experiences with security officers and police are more defined by what hasn’t happened than what has.

My name is Jaclyn Bernstein; I am in my third year of the Macaulay honors program at Hunter College. I am majoring in environmental studies, with a concentration in policy and resource management. In addition, I am double minoring in international relations and public policy. I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia – Newtown, Pennsylvania, and moved to New York with the hopes of eventually securing an internship with the United Nations Environmental Programme.

Top three things about living in NYC:

1. NYC is a good place to learn. Both in terms of basket weaving and humanity.
2. I like unexpectedly encountering parades and protests. Most places it is hard to organize 100 people into an event. The wonder of population density.
3. If a food, an art form, a culture, or a subculture exists, it exists here.

Bottom three things about living in NYC:

1. It is oddly difficult to actually meet people – that is to form meaningful friendships with classmates and non-classmates alike.
2. I dislike catcalling – it is the greatest contributor to a feeling of insecurity living in the city – far more than the shadowy threat of a terrorist attack.
3. The air, soil, and light pollution, and how most times I don’t even notice it.

My most memorable transportation experience was repeated several times over the course of months. In the fall of my sophomore year, I procured a fantastic internship with the National Park Service at Floyd Bennett Field in the Gateway National Recreation Area. It was well paying, interesting and fun work that intersected well with my chosen career field. However, it was a two-hour commute each way between the dorm and the farthest outskirts of Brooklyn. Over the course of several months, I discovered a truth that some people learn earlier in life and many learn later – commuting is horrible. I rode two trains, one bus, and walked about 30 minutes a few times a week. While public transportation generally makes my life easier, it was there I learned the unseen time drains found in transferring and waiting, transferring and waiting. I sometimes paid to travel for the same amount of time I was paid to work. I was lucky it was only a part-time job and I was able to transition many of my work hours into designing the website. Not everyone has the same option.