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Funny you should mention this. I teach at a small college in a small rural town in Utah. If you want your kids to be safe, send them here. Our Clery Act Report for the last three years is filled with 1s and 0s. OTOH, we have had a rash of bike thefts this semester . . .</p>
<p>Clery Act Reports for most colleges are not for the “faint of heart!”</p>
<p>What unsafe cities are we talking about here? Boston, where there is crime even in “safe” neighborhoods, but which also has dozens of colleges and universities? New Orleans? Los Angeles? Or is it the specific college campuses you are talking about?</p>
<p>Crimes like theft and, unfortunately, rape, are a fact of life at almost all colleges. I’d be more concerned about shootings and assaults.</p>
<p>Every place has inherent dangers which you just need to learn to guard against.
However some universities are in dangerous areas that need to be considered in the final decision.</p>
<p>Friend of mine’s D was admitted to great med school with gorgeous campus. When they studied more closely and realized once you stepped off the campus you were in high crime area they nixed it (D agreed). Police would even escort students across the street to apartments on the other side. Not worth their sanity no matter how great the school. Barbed wire on the wall surrounding the school was a clue–not that it appeared on the website.</p>
<p>My son visited a great campus for competition during college. He said the campus was truly beautiful but once you got off the outlines of the campus (which was fairly small) that it was very unsafe and he would never have considered that school knowing what he discovered. His own school has “good” and “bad” areas but he deemed this particular campus as unsafe period.</p>
<p>My D went to a college which had sketchy areas nearby and it never bothered her. She stayed away from those parts and really enjoyed her college years. I will add that over those years that the college made real efforts and progress to expand its footprint to limit crime in the area. But over her four years she never reported anyone having problems.</p>
<p>Then there are the true anomalies–my own college (as an alum) experienced murder–and tons of parents pulled their kids out immediately. So yeah, parents do worry about safety obviously but there are no guarantees no matter where you go. Just a matter of the more you know the better off you are.</p>
<p>And I’m pretty sure nobody should leave a bike unlocked no matter where they are…</p>
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<p>I am going to suggest that the only difference between the first college and the colleges your children actually attended was that your children were actually familiar with their own colleges, and so felt them as safe. If they had gone to college somewhere else, and then visited their own colleges “for a competition” over a couple of days, they might very well have reached the same conclusion your son reached about the campus he visited for a couple of days. People’s instincts are not exactly reliable when looking at a new place.</p>
<p>I agree that safe is a subjective term but there are definately schools where the campus and surrounding areas have a much higher percentage of violent crime and other criminal activity. I learned this the hard way. My daughter fell in love with a school that we felt was a high match/low reach and without doing any research other than academic-based stats, I encouraged her. Turns out the rate of violence just outside the parameters of the campus is sky high and the campus itself has far too many incidents for me to feel safe having her go there. I squashed “her dream” as she says. I didn’t make that mistake again. She has 18 schools on her list but there was another safety school on the list that I made her cross off ~ not as bad as the first school but still not anywhere I would feel comfortable about. </p>
<p>I judged the “safeness” of schools by how many times the emergency buttons were pointed out on campus tours. Georgia Tech? Mentioned about every other sentence. Purdue? Mentioned once in passing when we happened to be standing next to one. University of Illinois? Forget it!</p>
<p>This is actually a difficult thing, because people have different ideas of what “safe” is. The statistics often don’t tell the whole story, because for some schools they include areas that, while near campus, are not places that students are likely to go.</p>
<p>It’s also subjective based on the kid – I grew up in some pretty rough neighborhoods, but we raised our kids in a much safer environment. So I frankly think my kids don’t have the same self-preservation skills I had at the same age (as much as we talk to them about staying safe, it’s different when you grew up having to stay safe).</p>
<p>I think it’s only natural for a parent to worry about a child’s safety, and to ask lots of questions. Those questions often don’t become apparent until the last minute, because safety is only one consideration, and because bad things happen everywhere. D is at a city school that sits right between great wealth and great poverty. I was worried, but I wanted all the good the school has to offer her, so I called the school and asked the questions before she made her final decision. I don’t know why that would “burn everyone up”… It’s pretty standard–you worry, you ask, you make the choice, and in our very, very protected world, 99% of the time your kid is absolutely fine. But a parent who told me they didn’t have worries…? That would alarm me.</p>
<p>I think a lot of it depends on how closely you encircle the campus itself. Given the campus I’m most familiar with, Northwestern, If I were to approach from the north, I’d be driving through communities of seven-figure homes and my impression would be - wow, the only crime around here is the price of shoes at Neiman-Marcus. If I were to approach from the south, I’d be driving through a business district and my impression would be - ok, use the same precautions as in any metro area. If I were to approach from the west, I’d think - wow, I wouldn’t want my kid walking more than a few blocks west of campus for all the tea in China. But indeed, even though the area to the west is scruffy, traffic / walking patterns are such that no one really interacts with it. It’s rather like the blind men feeling the elephant - very different pictures depending on where you’re coming from.</p>
<p>It also depends on what makes something feel safe or not-safe for the individual. I always think busier areas with people walking around are safer than non-busy areas, but other people feel differently and feel more at risk in crowded urban areas. </p>
<p>This is pretty clearly “unsafe” – <a href=“http://nwherald.com/2014/10/21/champaign-university-of-illinois-police-warn-of-robberies-after-campus-attacks/acq5m77/”>http://nwherald.com/2014/10/21/champaign-university-of-illinois-police-warn-of-robberies-after-campus-attacks/acq5m77/</a> U of I has a reputation as being an unsafe campus. No way would I send my children there.</p>
<p>Sorry, Parent 1337, but that’s ridiculous. UIUC is a gigantic university. On a typical weekday during the academic year there are probably something like 60,000 people on the campus at one point or another. When you have that many people in a relatively small space, it is going to generate some crime. Who knows? The per-capita crime rate at UIUC may be lower than at Wasatch Writer’s small campus in Utah with the 1s and 0s.</p>
<p>Seriously? I don’t have any perception of the U of I being unsafe.</p>
<p>Anything can happen anywhere. My kid’s bike was stolen his freshman year, and there was a mugging several yards outside his dorm at a time when the campus was pretty busy (a football game or somesuch). Some of it you have to chalk up to life in or near the big city. </p>
<p>It’s all pros and cons. Both my kids go to school in suburbs of major cities. </p>
<p>Kid A’s school offers easily accessible public transportation (subway / light rail) to downtown. That brings the pro of easy access to all the city has to offer - but it also means that any schmoe can use the public transportation to get where he doesn’t belong, and hop the public transportation back out of town after causing trouble.</p>
<p>Kid B’s school offers less easily accessible public transportation to downtown. That brings the pro of more isolation, fewer people around who don’t belong there, but less easy access to all the city has to offer. </p>
<p>As well, I feel better about Kid A using busy public transportation with lots of people around at all hours versus Kid B who might get off at an empty train station and walk alone. I think the second situation is more fraught with potential peril. It depends on what you fear most. </p>
<p>I think having your kid develop street-smarts is also an important, worthwhile goal. I say this because I have one kid who has street smarts and one who is a bit more absent-minded professor. </p>
<p>@RosaRugosa</p>
<p>Maybe you didnt read my posts thoroughly? Yes parents worry. But why send your child to a place that you don’t feel comfortable with to begin with?? Its one thing to ask for advice BEFORE one applies/matriculates…a totally different animal to seek out the advice of others and to complain AFTER Jane/Johnny has been dropped off. Safety is NOT negotiable. If I felt like dd would have been in an unsafe environment, then its wasn’t going to get much attention. Move on to the next school on the list.</p>
<p>And yes, things happens everywhere but any school that opened up my hairy eyeball was not an option. </p>
<p>And safety should not be the last thing considered. </p>
<p>But, Pizzagirl, doesn’t Kid B’s school have The Bus That Cannot Be Named? The very brand name for easy access?</p>
<p>Kidding aside, I would much rather have my kids doing the things they and their friends did at an urban campus thought by many to be dangerous than the things other kids do at rural schools thought to be safe. Having a wallet stolen once in a blue moon is a fair tradeoff for never driving drunk or getting alcohol poisoning.</p>
<p>It is an issue when we let our kids go off anywhere, whether it’s to a college away from home or trips or visits. How much weight we put on to certain factors is a private things. One of my neighbors had a wretched experience when her daughter was badly injured in a car accident while away at college. That she was at a college that was not easily accessible, that top notch medical options were not there were things that upset her greatly as they caused a lot of stress, a lot of trouble, cost a lot of money, and meant less than optimum medical care. This was an issue she investigated for her subsequent child’s college list. </p>
<p>Three of the 7 children I know who died at college were at colleges in about as safe of an area as one could find, and one was at a school within a half hour of home in very familiar territory. I think that if the overall stats are something that concern you, get them for the area of the college, the crime stats both on campus and off. If distance is an issue–there is a lot of comfort knowing you can get to the scene within a half a day without breaking the bank, then make that a criterion. People do.</p>
<p>In my case, I had one of mine at a nice safe school in a nice safe campus, and he chose to live 3 miles away in an area that was seedy and dangerous. I fought it for two years. A classmate was shot to death the night before son’s graduation,and he was right in the vicinity of where it happened. </p>
<p>But you can try to get certain odds in your favor.</p>
<p>@JHS </p>
<p>The point wasn’t the stolen wallet. It was the bad feeling that we had after the experience. Why would I send dd to a school and its environment gave off bad vibes? </p>
<p>Post 24–I was surprised at my son’s reaction. He’s been to lots of places on his own, pretty well-traveled and is the last to give a “bad” opinion of most anywhere. But not this time.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.campuscrime.net/stats/”>http://www.campuscrime.net/stats/</a> Those are older numbers, but one of the highest crime rates among its peers. The last two weeks has had 12 mob beatings/robberies. That’s not normal on any size campus. The phenomenon goes back for years. This summer people were being shot with darts from a blowgun. My friends are sending their children at UIUC pepper spray and I even heard them discussing sending handguns. Call me ridiculous if you like, but still no child of mine will be going there.</p>