25 Most Dangerous College Campuses

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>The news this morning stated that a new report had come out listing the 25 most dangerous college campuses.</p>

<p>Interestingly enough, Harvard made the list (I forget the number at the moment). </p>

<p>Think it could be a fun discussion based on opinion and experience. Here is the link of the article which then links you to a slide show of the list.</p>

<p>How</a> Safe Is Your College? - Page 1 - The Daily Beast</p>

<p>My personal opinion is that this list is actually the list of the 25 most honest schools as the statistics they reported have put them on this list. I can think of schools that I have always heard were in a dangerous environment and yet they are not on the list.</p>

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<p>To help out, here is a the list. For the text and explanations you will need to see the article and slide show.</p>

<h1>1 Emerson College</h1>

<h1>2 St. Xavier University</h1>

<h1>3 University of Maryland - Baltimore</h1>

<h1>4 Tufts University</h1>

<h1>5 MIT</h1>

<h1>6 University of Maryland - Eastern Shore</h1>

<h1>7 Grambling State University</h1>

<h1>8 South Caroline State</h1>

<h1>9 Bowie State</h1>

<h1>10 North Carolina Central</h1>

<h1>11 Fitchburg State</h1>

<h1>12 Illinois Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>13 Hampton University</h1>

<h1>14 University of Baltimore</h1>

<h1>15 Norfolk State University</h1>

<h1>16 California State University - Monteray Bay</h1>

<h1>17 Springfield College</h1>

<h1>18 Brown</h1>

<h1>19 Buffalo State</h1>

<h1>20 Harvard</h1>

<h1>21 Alabama A&M</h1>

<h1>22 New Jersey Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>23 Yale</h1>

<h1>24 University of California - Riverside</h1>

<h1>25 The College of Saint Rose</h1>

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<p>This appears to be very sensitive to state or local law and practice regarding crime statistics reporting. It does not seem possible, otherwise, that almost half of the most dangerous campuses in the country would be in diverse locations in Massachusetts and Maryland (including the Eastern Shore).</p>

<p>The note on Harvard says that the university is particularly aggressive about getting students to report acquaintance/date sexual assault, and that its high numbers of those crimes (which factored heavily into its ranking) may be more an indication of safety than danger. The note on Emerson says that the campus itself is practically crime-free, but that some adjacent areas are problematic.</p>

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<p>Please, those are not the most honest colleges by choice. If you read below, you will find that the law has changed. In my opinion, colleges reporting high level of crimes on their campuses BEFORE the law changed were the honest ones.</p>

<p>"Since 1991, under the federal “Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act,” all institutions of higher education, both public and private, that participate in any federal student aid programs have had to report three years’ worth of campus crime statistics, post security policies and make timely warnings. </p>

<p>Many image-conscious schools, however, exploited loopholes in the law to hide crimes or violated it without fear of enforcement.</p>

<p>The 1998 amendments and implementing regulations, which took effect July 1 of this year, close off many of these loopholes, strengthen reporting, and put schools in fear of a $25,000-per-violation fine."</p>

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<p>Wow, I really thought there would have been more discussion on this topic.</p>

<p>Anyhow, maybe my claim of “honest colleges” was a bit much but the list just does not make sense to me.</p>

<p>I am going to start with the premise that all these colleges belong as “most dangerous campuses” and that all schools are reporting their statistics accurately and using the same standards for determining what offenses should be reported. Frequently, the claim for a school danger level had to do with the surrounding environment. If that is the case, how can Emerson be on the list while Fisher college that practically abuts Emerson is not. Same with Harvard. How can Harvard be so bad and Lesley, which is imbedded into the Harvard campus is not. Longy School of Music and Cambridge College are also both right there.</p>

<p>Here is another site, that actually got an interesting discussion on this list:
[If</a> Emerson gave Tina Brown an award, would she be too scared to pick it up? | Universal Hub](<a href=“http://www.universalhub.com/node/27784]If”>If Emerson gave Tina Brown an award, would she be too scared to pick it up? | Universal Hub)</p>

<p>A couple quotes from this discussion are:

How would an environment like that not be deemed dangerous. Oh, I know, they have bulletproof glass so it is not dangerous…

Interesting that these didn’t show up anywhere on the list.

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<p>Except for the fact that it’s not true (at least nowadays it’s not). I’m a junior at Temple, and I’ve heard gunshots maybe twice. And bulletproof glass? LMAO, yeah, no…</p>

<p>Despite being in North Philly, a place notorious for crime, our campus is incredibly, incredibly safe.</p>

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<p>I was surprised to see Tufts on the list. Medford seemed pretty safe. Maybe I am naive. Thought Johns Hopkins would appear on the list. Baltimore isn’t the safest place and how about that student who had to stab an intruder with his samurai sword recently!</p>

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<p>Son graduated from Tufts last year. His main complaint is that these days bikes are doomed which did not seem to be the case his freshman year.</p>

<p>Dionte - sorry is what I re-quoted does not appear accurate. Obviously I don’t personally know Temple. But as for gunshots, I am going on 48 and never heard a gunshot in my life. You are already two ahead of me</p>

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<p>Well from the news I would expect Yale, Virginia Tech, Usc</p>

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<p>That’s because odds are you’re a lifelong suburbanite.</p>

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<p>There’s the stoopid part. Either you measure crimes-on-students per student, or crimes-on-everyone per capita in the neighborhood. Mixing the two penalizes a school just for being small.</p>

<p>Harvard would do pretty well in the gown menacing town category.</p>

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<p>Dionte - Yes, I am a suburbanite but then let’s take my Tuft’s alum son. Four years in this #4 ranked “dangerous” school and not one shot heard. And I think if you poled every student there, they would have also never heard a gun shot.</p>

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<p>That’s probably because these rankings are not very legitimate.</p>

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<p>That’s actually my position. There just seems to be something off in the analysis and then, to make matters worse, the morning news reports it. I guess, in the end, I am as bad as the news for beginning this thread.</p>

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<p>If you read the discussion, Harvard makes the list because of the amount of on-campus crime it reports, not because of surrounding-community crime. And the editors do caution that Harvard seems to report as on-campus crime stuff that goes unreported elsewhere (getting handled under the legal theory of “boys will be boys”).</p>

<p>Tufts, I think, also aggressively reports on-campus crimes. Emerson reports practically no on-campus crime, but gets penalized for the surrounding community. Fisher, Lesley, Longy, may all have been too small to make the survey. I still think it’s awfully suspicious that so many of the group are Boston-area colleges – four of 25, and three of the top five. But no B.U. or Northeastern, the largest colleges there. Hmmmmmm. And a similar deal with Maryland – way disproportionately represented, but no Hopkins or UMCP. </p>

<p>Temple: Yes, Temple’s actual campus is very safe. No, the area around it is not. Temple may get off the hook because (a) it has a huge number of students, many of whom commute, so the number of crimes is getting divided by a large number, and many of the crimes committed by or against students are happening miles from the university; and (b) the “bad” areas of North Philadelphia are so depopulated that they don’t actually have a high absolute crime rate anymore. It’s high relative to the population that lives there, but not relative to the Temple student body.</p>

<p>I invite students at Tufts or UM - Eastern Shore who are upset and fearful about how dangerous their schools are to come hang out for an evening at Broad and Diamond. I think they will sleep easier for it when they get back to their dorms.</p>

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<p>^ what is broad and diamond?</p>

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<p>This morning, when I heard the “report”, I talked to my Tufts son about it. His reaction was something to the effect of “ya, it’s getting bad. Your bike is not safe. If they can’t take your bike, they take it’s light”. Ok, I will admit that is a crime but not of the “dangerous” sort.</p>

<p>Then last weekend, my Harvard D took the red line to Tufts to visit friends. She was walked back to Davis square by one Tufts student at midnight who subsequently had to walk back to campus alone (I was not please with that part). D then walked from the red line to her dorm at Harvard at 12:30+ (I assume alone on this part but I do have to talk to her if so). These are all actions that I am guessing would not be recommended on some other campuses or neighborhoods in the country.</p>

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<p>Broad and Diamond is an intersection just north of the main Temple campus. Actually, the REALLY educational places to hang out would probably be the areas to the east of the Temple campus. But I don’t have a clear picture of those places in my mind. (Because I never go there. Deliberately.)</p>

<p>(My son had a friend/teammate in high school who lived about six blocks east of the Temple campus. I gave her a ride home once after a competition. I know that she did not feel free to walk any distance in her neighborhood after dark, not even on her block. A police car tailed me for several blocks on that trip in between Temple and her neighborhood. I wasn’t sure whether it was because they thought I was a suburbanite come cruising to make a drug buy, or whether as a presumptive suburbanite driving around there I was in need of an escort to get out safely. Either way . . . )</p>

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<p>I’m not surprised that Harvard is on the list. Its a completely open campus with all kinds of people walking right through it. My recollection of Columbia for example was that it was gated and definitely didn’t have the high traffic going through it that Harvard has.</p>

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<p>Haha you can do worse than Broad and Diamond.</p>