I spent some time at UF before the murders, when I was still in High School. I thought is was amazingly friendly. Students would smile, make eye contact, chat, whatever.
That all changed with the student murders. There was an immediate effect where a pack of 3 girls would cross the street just to avoid walking past a skinny little kid like me on the sidewalk (yeah, my black friends thought that was cute). Of course it got better, but I was there for a long time after the murders, and it never got back to the way it was before.
That first day when the "2 more bodies found" Alligator Extra came out, I went to Beaty Towers to visit an ex girlfriend. 2 brunettes, 2 blondes, all terrified. They immediately asked me to spend the night.
No, not like that.
Beaty is like this--first door opens to a common area consisting of a tiny kitchen, small table, and a bathroom. Then you have two bedrooms with two students in each.
They barricaded themselves in the bedrooms. Locked the doors and pushed desks against them. The gave me a sheet, a pillow, and an iron (closest thing to a weapon they had) and had me sleep on the floor in front of the common area door. Anybody breaking in would literally have to push my body out of the way.
The floors in Beaty were concrete with a thin industrial carpet on top. Imagine sleeping on the welcome mat at a Home Depot or something. That's what it was like.
After that night, three of the girls went home. The 4th was a little sister (for Sig Ep I think???) and stayed in the House.
(if you don't know what a "little sister" is, that's another conversation entirely)
Alex.