<p>^ wow, an entire web site devoted to one campus’ crime? Weird.</p>
<p>Put me in the “more concerned about rape by a fellow student than street crime” group. </p>
<p>@newhavenctmom - since you both live in and your daughter attends a school in a city and area that many do consider to be one of the more dangerous, what was your take on sending her there? Not dangerous? Familiar so OK? Or, sending her there despite that but not asking on CC about it after the fact?</p>
<p>Also, you have to teach your child to be safe. There are some unfortunate instances of college women who have been killed while engaging in risky behavior. And while of course it is not their fault they were killed, walking around alone and drunk, even in a “safe” college town, is risky behavior.</p>
<p>My kids spent two years in a country where even the traffic police were armed with AK40s. She was careful, and never felt unsafe. I would wager their crime rate was much higher than our little town, or where she went to college.</p>
<p>Our kids learned to be cautious, but they also didn’t let their lives be governed by fear. Plus, even in “unsafe” areas, the vast majority of people are not criminals.</p>
<p>Parent 1337, did you even look at that site? The rate for all “violent crimes,” which seems to include robberies, was about 12 per 10,000 students per four-year period, or 0.12% in a college career. But that’s based on about 120 reported crimes per year. Last year, only about 1/4 of the crimes reported were serious enough to involve a police investigation, and that included only 8 sexual assaults and 8 assaults and batteries (1/8th of the crimes reported). Extrapolating from that, your child at UIUC would have a risk of about 0.015% of being a victim of a serious assault during a four-year college career.</p>
<p>Horrifying!</p>
<p>The site also tells you that 57% of crimes occur around bar closing time, and the majority involve one or more person who had been drinking. 75% of the sexual assault victims knew their attacker.</p>
<p>In other words – and I’m sure this will be big news to everyone – UIUC is a place where kids drink and sometimes get into trouble. But not very often as victims of crime, and even more rarely as victims of serious crime. Most of the time it seems to be a closing-time fist fight, or a wallet being lifted. Or the kind of sexual assault that happens everywhere, because it involves social mores among students who know one another, not campus safety.</p>
<p>Seriously. There’s nothing on that site that would give me a minute’s pause about sending a kid to UIUC. How much safer than that is your neighborhood? Do you really know?</p>
<p>Guess I’m a horrible parent. My D was only interested in urban campuses - think BU, Northeastern, Depaul, NYU - and she refused to get out of the car at rural-ish LACs. After her sophomore year she moved out of the dorms and into the Belly of the Beast - an off-campus apartment. We drilled her and nagged her to be alert and aware when out in the city; she learned to be city savvy. t worked out okay, but of course she never left her purse unattended or her bike unlocked. </p>
<p>To be honest, I worried about her most when she was in the dorm and attending parties on campus or at frats. </p>
<p>My NYU D who will take the L train home from Brooklyn parties at 3am with friends, gets spooked walking 5 houses up our suburban street because it’s too dark, no one else is outside and she fears being forced into a car.</p>
<p>While I would never send my child to a school that was truly unsafe, a sense of feeling safe is very subjective. Obviously D is feeling better about her busy, urban campus, than if I sent her to a pastoral, isolated campus.</p>
<p>My kids don’t walk around our street at night because of the bears!</p>
<p>My D spent 4 months in Moscow (study abroad at the Moscow Art Theater). I was worried because I heard much about how unsafe it was in Moscow, especially for foreigners. The kids in this program had a week-long orientation period most of which included advice on personal safety issues, e.g., where to go and not go, how to behave, etc. The people organizing the program took safety very seriously. When D got to Moscow was so busy that she had very little free time to explore. However, the second time she went out with a group, she did have her wallet and passport stolen. Both were inside an open tote bag and she thinks someone may have taken it from the tote when she was on the subway. Getting another passport and wiring her money and dealing with it all was a pain, but the experience at the theater program was probably one of the highlights of my D’s college career and put her on the career path she is now following. </p>
<p>There are risks everywhere and kids need to know what they can do to keep themselves safe, even in places that are seemingly “safe”. No place is 100% safe and I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be cautious, but I also don’t believe that fearfulness should be a primary factor in one’s life choices.</p>
<p>My kids both attended a school in an urban area. The school has had some violence, including a few highly-publicized murders near campus. While attending their U, neither of my kids mentioned any concerns about their personal safety. The only times they were victims of thefts were when they left their property unattended (on a gym bench and on the floor of a theater). They never indicated feeling unsafe and never (to our knowledge) walked about under the influence of anything, which probably added to their safety.</p>
<p>Even rural campuses have had very sad incidents where young people (especially women) have been crime victims–rapes, murders, and other violent acts. We were not particularly concerned about our children’s safety and to this day, our D lives near the urban campus of her school and feels as safe as one does in an urban area.</p>
<p>@NewHavenCTmom I think it’s funny you say this just because of where you live-- I have a kid at Yale and have gotten my share of comments about “the environment there”! I don’t have any problem with New Haven (though my kid had her house slightly off-campus broken into over the summer <em>while the kids were sleeping in it</em> and my bike I lent her stolen from the back yard in a “pretty nice neighborhood” of NH. So I’m wondering what Ivy school you’re referring to! I thought NH had the worst rap of all of them! (And really, New Haven is very nice! This from a sheltered suburban gal)</p>
<p>@OHMomof2 </p>
<p>DD was raised a stones throw away from Phelps Gate. I have been a life long resident of NHV. My work takes me to suburban/heavily wooded areas & I often work the 3-11 shift. Sometimes my work responsibilities bleed into the midnight, 1am hour. I am scared crapless when I leave work at those wee hours of the night. Worrying that some psychopath is hiding amongst the trees. </p>
<p>I never fear walking on my street. Ever. </p>
<p>The latest case of a Yale student being murdered was a few years back. The young woman was thought to have been kidnapped by a New Havenite. She was murdered by a coworker, and stuffed into the wall of her lab. Her body was found a week later. On the day of her wedding. </p>
<p>So no, I don’t fear for her safety at all. </p>
<p>LOLOL @donnaleighg </p>
<p>Think bucolic, idyllic, tranquil. Post card setting may even come to mind. The point of sharing that unfortunate tale is this, if you or your student have a bad feeling about a place, why send them? And if you do send them, why come here to lament about it being unsafe after the posters have been hung on the dorm room wall? </p>
<p>You can set the parameters any way you please with your kids. I have a friend who was not permitted to go to NYU or Barnard back in her day because her parents did not want her in NYC. I know some who HAD to go to all women’s schools, local schools, small schools, catholic schools in order to get their tuition paid by parents who placed those limits. WHere and how you want to draw the line is your own business.</p>
<p>Yes, I worry about all of my kids. Not so much about their neighborhoods but about their choices and things that just can happen. I worry when they drive, I worry about all kinds of things. </p>
<p>I don’t equate urban with dangerous. I feel more unsafe in a remote town where I might find myself in a place where no one could hear me scream. Also, there is a safety feature built into big city living- high rise buildings and doormen. It is much harder to access an apartment in NYC than a house in the suburbs.</p>
<p>I agree that anything can happen anywhere.
I grew up in a Seattle suburb from mid 60’s to mid 70’s.
I was sexually assaulted on my jr high campus and raped twice before I was an adult.
A " safe" area, can mean it is socio- economically segregated, that property values are high and that they pass all their levies.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the streets are well lit and that there are passerby who aren’t afraid to get involved.</p>
<p>I agree w Harvestmoom. I think I read In Cold Blood too many times, but rural and isolated always strikes me as scarier. No one can hear you scream. </p>
<p>@uskoolfish ha I’m just like your daughter! Taking the subway and walking home late at night from the train in Brooklyn is no problem, but the suburban street I grew up on still creeps me out at night</p>
<p>A city street with people on it always feels way safer to me than a lonely road…bears or no lol @thumper1</p>
<p>NewHavenCTmom–I think I’m missing something. Are you concerned about your daughter’s personal safety should she attend the school that she visited and where someone stole her wallet or do you just feel the school’s response to the theft of your D’s wallet was inadequate, which is giving you second thoughts about the school in general and not the safety issue? If you and your daughter have concerns about the school and it doesn’t seem like a place where your D would be comfortable, then she should look somewhere else.</p>
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<p>Fun with statistics! Oh boy. If I take the number of deaths in Liberia due to ebola and scale it to deaths/10,000 people, I get 5.6. By your logic, I should have no problem sending my child to Liberia since that is such a small chance of a problem. If you read what I posted previously, there have been 12 gang assaults on students in the first two weeks of October. If you find that acceptable, cool. Like I said, I don’t. </p>