Living In Fear On The University Campus

Alan J. Schwarz
10 min readOct 18

University is supposed to be about socializing and Good times..

Image by Antonio Cansino from Pixabay

Alan Cohen was from Oshinga, a small town. He had a loving family and he had enjoyed an idyllic childhood. His family was in the cattle business and he was extremely close with his Dad, Joe.

Alan’s public school had two hundred kids and when he went to High School (It was a regional High School) it was considered much bigger as there were five hundred students.

The Cohen family had to drive sixty five miles to go to a Synagogue. They went for High Holidays and Alan had spent weeks studying for his Bar Mitzvah on Zoom with Rabbi Tolsty. When he finally had his Bar Mitzvah on March 8th it was a a tremendous success, Some of his friends from Oshinga came with their parents (who were friends of his parents) for the service and party. His best friend Brad McMullen said he loved the ‘’whole Bar Mitzvah thing’’ so much, he was going to ask his parents if he could turn Jewish.

In High School because the school wasn’t very big, there wasn’t a lot of sports teams. The boys from Oshinga knew how to play hockey, and almost every year they won the Reeve’s Championship Cup. They beat every team in Northumberland County. Alan was proud to be the captain of the Oshinga Holstein Bulls for the last two years of his high school career.

Due to the fact Alan was a talented Hockey player he received all kinds of scholarship offers from American Universities. He didn’t want to leave his family and Canada, so instead he applied to and was accepted at York University in Toronto. His Major was going to be commerce and he was going to eventually get his MBA.

When his Mom and Dad took the train with him to Toronto, they had a special time. There was much laughter and warmth. After arriving at the train station, they took a cab to York and he found his residence.

York housing had placed Alan on a floor in the Vanier Residence. He was assigned room number five zero nine. As soon as he and his parents walked into the room they met his roommate.

Wayne Laval was a tall blonde kid, who had chosen a bed and a desk by the window. He was already unpacking his stuff. As soon as he saw Alan and his parents, he stopped. ‘’Yeah, I’m Wayne. I was here first…

Alan J. Schwarz

Alan Schwarz loves life. He is the founder of JAMS Productions, a television production company based in Toronto . His passion is writing.