That’s what is so scary about all of this. I don’t have an axe to grind but, given the many excellent universities in the US (and elsewhere), why subject your child to an elevated level of physical danger and mental stress?
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Having spent a decent amount of time on the South Side and having traveled extensively domestically, I can say Chicago is in a special league. I cannot think of another reputable university in such a dangerous area. I have not been to USC, I have seen the areas a mile or two from it and they are not as bad.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore? 299 murders in Baltimore YTD for s city of 585,000. that is a homicide rate of 51.1 per 100,000.
In Chicago 762 murders for a city of 2,746,000. That is a homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000.
The immediate area of JHU is nice but high crime areas surround it on 3 sides. No members of the JHU community have been killed this year.
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I know someone that has problems. My daughter is a UChicago student and we not only visit often, but we have had to take days off our jobs to go and stay with her when her roommate was not in town, because she’s terrified to be and walk around alone.
Hyde Park IS a war zone. Chicago IS a war zone. I have accompanied her multiple times to CVS, Target, grocery store, gym, labs, library, and I must say I have never felt so unsafe in my life. She lives around the area where Dennis Zheng was killed and about 5-10 min walk from the campus. She takes a Lyft or Uber to go to classes and stays on the phone with us all the time when out of the appartment or university buildings. After Max Lewis, who she knew well, was killed on the Green Line, she is afraid to take the train to go downtown. It took weeks this summer to console her after his senseless murder.
Living with the thought that your child might be next is terrifying and the stress is consuming all of us. The open letter of the 300 faculty members has a link to a public letter written by Dennis’s mom. It is in Chinese, but it can be Google translated. It is heartbreaking! Please go and read it before saying no one has had problems. Please watch Max’s funeral on Youtube before saying no one had problems. With Yiran Fan in January, this is the third student killed this year so far. Who’s going to be next?
We have totally lost the confidence that UChicago can or will do anything so we are trying with all our means to have her transferred somewhere else. Never has the saying “better safe than sorry” been so true.
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Visit Hyde Park, as opposed to “reading about it”. Talk to multiple Students at the university to get the full picture. There is crime in Hyde Park, which is worrisome, but not close to the way you are describing. You speak as though kids are scared to leave their dorm and are fearful for their safety. That’s just not the case with the vast majority.
When my son was touring colleges, I was surprised by a number of university locations. Yale, Johns Hopkins, UPENN… I can go on and on.
This is a problem at many universities and it needs to be addressed aggressively and Judiciously.
Am I biased toward UChicago? Absolutely, because My son, along with many other students, are incredibly happy living there. Does security and accountability need to step up? Absolutely. And I’m hopeful it will.
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As the thread stated previously, Hyde Park is not the worst offender here. Yes, you do not want to walk alone in Hyde Park at night, especially as a woman. You may or may not get accosted during the day. Going west or south of campus is asking for a high chance of bodily harm that may be life-altering. Penn bought much of west Philadelphia to gentrify it itself and New Haven lacks this level of violence by a long shot. They were also locking their campus down in the 80s.
Most students do not live in fear because it would be too uncomfortable to do so. If they feel safe in the UChicago area, then there is probably nowhere in the US they would feel unsafe. It is that much of an outlier.
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It made my heart broken when read your comments about your daughter’s feelings. I can read in Chinese and knew what Zheng’s mom wrote. The news spread in China very quickly. As I am thinking of your daughter, it is better to transfer her out for her mental health. Life in the university shouldn’t be full of fear.
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Conflicting student protests at UChicago:
August, 2020 Demanding campus police be defunded and abolished.
Students Call For University Of Chicago To Defund Campus Police - YouTube
November, 2021 Demanding more campus safety measures.
U of Chicago students, staff demand better safety after graduate’s murder - YouTube
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I agree that a student should not wander to the notoriously bad areas, but why on earth would they? My son stays within a mile of campus, unless jogging at the waterfront. He feels safe in Hyde Park and doesn’t need to go further, as all his friends live close by and his favorite eating spots are here. He and his friends go downtown most weekends. It’s a quick Uber ride, that’s not expensive when split with 3 or 4 people.
We come from a small town, and believe me, I was worried about him going to school in a big city. Luckily, he enjoys it and has adjusted well. I can understand that it’s not for everyone, though. And, no, he would not feel safe anywhere. We’ve driven through the very bad sections of the South Side, and he would not feel safe living there, but Hyde Park is not one of those places. I do, however, feel that the university and Hyde Park need to be aggressive and judicious with their upcoming security improvements.
Within a quarter mile of the campus, south and west, are areas with blood curdling levels of crime. There are metro lines you do not take under any circumstance. Yes, Hyde Park is fine during the day for someone by himself. At night, it is really not worth wandering around alone.
What this thread boils down to is at what point is the risk “worth it.” If a senior is choosing between UChicago and a community college, the choice is clear. UChicago v. Carnegie Mellon or Wake, UChicago is still worth it assuming the others are not a much better fit. UChicago v. Penn or Brown, I am skeptical, despite UChicago being a better education by all accounts I have gathered. The risk is that high.
It is truly disgraceful that this country requires 18 year olds to be as vigilant on a block by block basis as Lima or Johannesburg and that we make excuses for utterly barbaric behavior.
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And some of the signs from the first protest were just recycled for this second one.
Johns Hopkins.
USC is a special case in that they started to embrace the local community after the '68 Watts riots. (Technically, 'SC is in South-Central.) USC gives hiring priority to local residents for all support jobs. USC provides scholarships to local kids so they can attend the Uni. USC’s ed school provides counseling and advising adn tutoring to local middle and high schoolers. Been doing that for decades, on the quiet. As a result, recent nearby unrest did not touch the campus. The local community is starting to view the Uni as their employer. (It helps that many USC grads work in local governments so they can continue to direct resources to that area. It also helps that LA is growing faster, so businesses continue to grow and invest, unlike Chicago – slowest growth of any large city – and Bawlamer – negative growth over past decades.)
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U Chicago also embraces the local community and has for decades. U Chicago has similar programs and hiring practices as the ones you cite for USC.
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Here in the city of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, Baltimore have been working with the local communities for decades as well, with similar programs.
The Uni has a long history of displacement. In the 30’s & 40’s, UChicago had covenants in local RE deals to keep blacks from living near campus. In the late 50’s thru 60’s, UofC tried to move further south by displacing low income folks – primarily blacks. Rebuilding trust is hard to recapture, particularly as the HP area continues to gentrify (and more poor folks gets pushed out).
It’s just a much different town-gown relationship than what USC has. Again, the local LA City and LA County governments have many USC grads in leadership positions, so even tho its a major private Uni, it gets a lotta love from the local community. (The Trojan Family is real.)
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I agree with you on some points, but you are off on your distance of “blood curdling levels of crime” 1/4 mile south and west of the university. That just is inaccurate. Yes, those are the boundaries for south and west of campus, but that does not paint the whole picture of where the vast majority of the violent crime is occurring. With that said, my son would never venture to that area and pass those boundaries.
As for your assessment of choosing a university based off safety, I see your point, and I thought about this when my son was accepted to Brown, Cornell, Lehigh and UChicago. Like I said, we are from a small town, so my preference was a university that wasn’t in a large city. This was not his preference, and I needed to respect that. Also, the education and opportunities just couldn’t be overlooked. He’s very happy with his choice.
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I am not sure exactly what you are getting at here. Plenty of people get priced out or forced to move from their neighborhoods in the US without murder, sexual assault, and mugging as a result. I would be very, very surprised if any of the South Side perpetrators of those three crimes had any understanding or awareness of the 30s/40s practices you described.
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And maybe the criminals even know the names of the officers too. 
Hire a bunch of former Mossad agents to help with security and patrol the neighborhoods. Do what someone said Penn has done, which would mean buying up the South Side.
Again, when you say nothing could have prevented any of the 3 recent murders, you’re not a security expert, so your opinions of what has been done, is being done and what can be done fall on my deaf ears at least.
Otherwise, we’re just bracing for the next crime to happen. The “grin and bear it” strategy.
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I don’t intend to dismiss the horror of the recent murders nor suggest that measures shouldn’t be taken to alleviate dangers to the extent that they’re reasonable or even possible. However, some element of danger is built into the location of this campus. At least that has been so since the early part of the previous century. It was certainly so when I was a student in the 60’s.
Although it is quite reasonable to want to avoid a school so situated, that element of danger, that proximity to the neighborhoods of very poor people, the sense that “it’s not Kansas anymore,” was very much a part of the appeal of this university to me as a youngster in high school in a small crime-free but dull city in the hinterlands. In my mind it was also related to the edginess of the university in intellectual fields - there is a danger in ideas as well as on city streets. In effect I saw these dangers as part of a package, and it was a package I longed to embrace as an alternative to the placidity and unadventurousness of suburban schools.
In “Young Men and Fire,” Norman Maclean wrote about this sort of longing. All young lives, he believed, have danger built into them. Starting adult life is in itself a hazardous undertaking in multiple ways. This is simply one of them. As a matter of actual probability it is one of the least likely to actually strike down any given young person.
They sort of did that at one point, back in mid-20th century. It kept the university from having to relocate.
You are misquoting me. There are indeed solutions. But keeping students home for remote learning won’t prevent a student out and about for other reasons from being gunned down either on the sidewalk or the CTA. Lyft rides at night won’t prevent murders that happen during the day (as all three happened) nor will it keep you safe as you walk to your car. When the frequency of violent crime increases, things happen when you wouldn’t have expected them to. That’s been the problem. The solution in all cases is to stop those who are driving around in stolen vehicles or who are walking down the street carrying a gun before they strike. As for the stray bullet on the CTA: someone knows something and has chosen not to come forward. The solution there is more complicated because it requires buy-in from the larger community, many of whom have been victimized much more severely and frequently than what’s been happening in Hyde Park.
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