<p>Here’s a way of asking this: is there any college where the risk of crime to a reasonable kid who takes sensible precautions is serious enough to be a strong reason to avoid that college? In my opinion, a lot of colleges where people worry about crime–like Yale and Columbia, for example–do not pose a high enough risk to a reasonable person for this to be a major decision factor.</p>
<p>There is a university here in the DC area that has a serial rapist attacking both on campus and the nearby neighborhood. That is the kind of crime I want to really know about. That and things like robberies and arsons.</p>
<p>(re: post 38) How is Emerson on that list, but BU and Northeastern are not? Same with Harvard and MIT?</p>
<p>I don’t think the list is terribly accurate or meaningful.</p>
<p>^^Because it is from the Daily Beast?</p>
<p>DD lives in Isla Vista. I have to laugh because she’s so much safer there than when she lived in our city, since everything is in walking distance. Like many others have said, the crime is petty crime. Aside from bike thefts, car mirrors get dislodged on a regular basis, and I’m sure there are a number of drunk crimes, like trespass, littering and public urination. Basically though, it is a poor area, but its not the type of place that anyone would feel scared.</p>
<p>To be fair, the actual article (perhaps not the OPs title) makes it quite clear that the list deals with property crime only.</p>
<p>I actually lived within the zone pictured in the article (on a first floor no less), and I definitely never felt unsafe, although I was mindful of locking my door when I left my apartment.</p>
<p>^^ Exactly. This thread is misnamed. Violent crime is of far greater interest to prospective college students (and their parents) than (often petty) property crime.</p>
<p>Property crime can easily translate to violent crime when there is robbery involved (personal confrontation). Many of the “property crimes” on the UCB campus involve groups of criminals who threaten students with knives, beatings, etc. in order to steal their laptops, cell phones, and iPods. If no one is injured, the incident is recorded as a robbery, although it easily could have turned into a violent crime. The Clery Act information for each campus contains the breakdown between burglary and robbery on campus. Unfortunately, not all campuses actually contain student housing (e.g., UCSB/Isla Vista) or the urban areas which separate the student dorms from the campus (e.g., UC Berkeley).</p>
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<p>Just a minor correction-the student body president (Eve Carson) was not out for a night on the town, but was at home studying when the two thugs (from Durham, no less) knocked on her house’s door and said that they had car trouble. When Eve stepped out to assist, they kidnapped her.</p>
<p>Seriously, how did Temple not make the list? I was expecting it to be #1.</p>
<p>I’ve heard the University of Cincinnati described as being “surrounded by a ghetto”. Never managed to make my way down to campus, but the son of my cousin was mugged just off campus a few years ago on his way home. I also remember a breaking news story a while back about shots being fired in one of the academic buildings. Great learning environment 
They still have a decent football team.</p>
<p>Lenitus. “surrounded”? Then you heard wrong. The green space of Burnet Woods to the north? Or the west side–Clifton Avenue, where the frat houses, Hillel, Christian Science Church, HUC, and hospitals are?</p>
<p>The area overall is improving, and on the south side there are many more good places to eat and reasons for people to be out and about.</p>
<p>Like many urban campuses, there is one side of off campus (to the east) you should probably avoid at night. Use your common sense.</p>
<p>Maybe you should make your way down to campus one of these days.</p>
<p><a href=“re:%20post%2038”>quote</a> How is Emerson on that list, but BU and Northeastern are not? Same with Harvard and MIT?
[/quote]
I assume the geographical “zoom” is fairly tight. Emerson is right on Boston Common, where a lot of petty crime and occasional serious crime takes place. It’s also a few blocks from the theater district and the old Combat Zone, which is still a relatively dicey area. Even Northeastern’s surroundings are relatively low-crime by comparison, and certainly BU’s, Harvard’s and MIT’s are. </p>
<p>It does puzzle me that Tufts is so high on the list. I don’t think of Davis Square or Medford Hillside as high-crime areas by any stretch, but I haven’t lived around there.</p>
<p>re astrodeb’s point–I thought armed robbery was always classified as a violent crime whether anybody is injured or not…?</p>
<p>I’ve never felt endangered at UCSB in Isla Vista.</p>
<p>UT is twice on that list? </p>
<p>And I never hear anything bad crime wise coming from Baylor. </p>
<p>~shenanigan list~</p>
<p>This could reflect rates of crime reporting, more than rates of actual crime. Any list of violent crime could have the same “ascertainment error.”</p>
<p>Actually crime reporting on violent crimes is much more accurate than on property crimes. Especially in bad crime areas. Where do you think you wil be more likely to report vandalism, for example? In your nice suburban neighborhood where there is one murder every 20 years and the cops spend their time giving traffic tickets or the urban neighborhood that certainly does its part to add to the yearly murder rate. When I lived in CHicago and had crime happen to me, I only reported it to the Chicago police department once and that was because I needed a crime report to get a check reissued that had been stolen from my mailbox. I didn’t bother with the other crimes because it wasn’t a high priority for the police.</p>
<p>I would be really careful with ‘statistics’ like this, they often indicate only what the person compiling them did, to try and sell a magazine article or get published. The problem with statistics like this is they can be misleading, to say the least. For example, I saw a stat that showed the most number of deaths by heart attack was in a certain zip code in Arizona…turned out to be a place with a huge concentration of senior citizen housing of all sorts (it also was one of the ‘oldest’ zip codes in the US)…</p>
<p>Property crimes are hard to define, because they cover a lot of crimes that most of us would look and say “it happens”. Things like Ipods and wallets and bags getting swiped; Ithaca college just had someone break into their music school earlier this year and vandalize a number of pianos seriously, a property crime; graffitti of all kinds happens, someone else thinks it would be clever to steal the school flag from a building, all are “property crimes”. </p>
<p>Or if, as someone pointed out, there is a low income housing complex that shares part of the zip code, that could be a statitics magnet, whereas the area as a whole is low (this is especially true in NYC, where housing projects are because of gentrification and other factors, in the middle of a high income/low crime zone in general). Problem is, people hear property crime and think it is some drugged out crazy robbing someone at knife point, and I can almost guarantee you a lot of those reported numbers are minor petty theft.</p>
<p>If you are interested in going to a school, it is more important to see the campus and area and look at a variety of things. For example, in the Urban schools, kids are routinely warned to be careful, and kids wouldn’t think of leaving their bag at a table someplace while ordering food, whereas in a more rural environment they may think they can or leave a door unlocked. Plus Urban schools tend to have strong security patrols, a lot of the time ex NYC cops work for NYU and Columbia, both of whom have large security groups. From what I am led to believe, at more rural/less urban schools, the security isn’t quite that strong (When I went to NYU, buildings all had NYU security, they didn’t use students as security). I wouldn’t let a list like this deter you, and more then I would let a list like US News and World Reports claims of ‘best colleges’ make the decision on where to go, both are too complex to be narrowed down to a list. </p>
<p>And having gone to NYU in the early 80’s, and a brother who went to Columbia in the late 70’s (when Morningside Heights was not a particularly good area), during the crack epidemic, high murder rates, huge homeless problems, I can tell you that crime was part of the distant background, not something we dealt with as a major factor (unlilke idiots pulling false alarms in the dorms at 2am in midwinter, someone else deciding they didn’t like tv and cutting the cable tv in the tv room on the night of a major sports playoff game), and while there were incidents, most of them were pretty petty. To be honest, with common sense and a bit of knowledge, it simply isn’t something we worried about all that much, we simply were as vigilant about that as wearing goggles and an apron in chem lab.
And as was shown by Virginia Tech, or the grad student killed at Yale, serious crime can happen anywhere, at any time, and maybe the better way is to be vigilant no matter where you are.</p>
<p>My H attended Baylor and he wasn’t shocked at all that it made this list.</p>
<p>Thanks Thrifty MOM!!</p>