@bradley69727 one of my kids got his masters in Winston Salem. He lived in the Ardmore area off campus. We were all around that town…lots of walking, etc. We never felt unsafe anywhere we went. And I asked my kid and he said he didn’t feel unsafe either.
Violent crime happens everywhere. Even Idaho.
If the Temple students had been murdered, it might have gotten more press. Robberies happen in Idaho and, like with Temple, they don’t garner much national attention.
I can’t help but wonder why it is always schools near black populations that get labeled as too dangerous.
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I live in a small beach town with about 6000 year round residents. But during the summer, our population probably triples. Our per capita crime statistics are based on the year round population when most of the crime takes place in summer.
It made me think about whether municipalities with large student populations are similarly impacted.
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This is spot on.
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Here’s an example of why this happens, and at one of the campuses singled out as “safe” a few posts above:
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Thank you for posting this. I had this case in the back of my mind when I posted, but for the life of me couldn’t remember which campus…
But not picking on Purdue. You hear these cases everywhere- a “sympathetic” Dean saying to the victim “Let’s meet privately in my office. We can figure out what comes next together, no need to drag the lawyers in here”.
No, you don’t need to “figure out” what comes next. There is SOP in these cases. Gather the physical (genetic) evidence quickly before it’s destroyed, contaminated, chain of custody is broken. Take statements. The perp lawyers up? Great, it’s his constitutional right. But no authority figure on campus has to “figure things out” which usually means asking/telling/suggesting to the victim that the cost to him/her (reputationally, time, bad PR just as they are applying to grad school, just as they are finishing up to graduate, whatever it is) is just too high to press charges.
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Pretty shameful.
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Violent crime does not happen at the same rate everywhere. That’s an indisputable fact.
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Many years ago I knew a freshman who was raped at a frat party (at a HYPSM school). Exactly as you put it, a “sympathetic” dean talked privately to the victim. “Let’s not ruin these young men’s lives.” The whole thing was hushed up because the young men involved were more important to the university than my friend.
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By official statistics, I’ve seen towns (including at least one with a college) of over 10,000 residents that have reported an annual violent crime rate of 0.0.
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Temple is local to me. It’s an extremely dangerous campus. It isn’t a race thing. Every single day there are serious crimes committed. Carjackings and home invasions are hot right now. My friend is on the FB pages- it’s filled with parents regretting letting their kids go there. There are issues with police understaffing and a lack of response for administrators. You hear about assaults but not the details - like a student being hit in the face with a brick or pistol whipped. So, your assumption is wrong.
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I remember one year cute, safe little Pomona College had one of the highest crime rates of any college. That seemed utterly ridiculous to me so I did a little digging, and it turned out that stealing or “borrowing” Claremont Consortium golf carts for short joy rides around campus was a popular college prank/dare that year.
Those “stolen” golf carts were all recorded as significant thefts/crimes and the carts were each valued at $4000.00-6000.00. The carts were found - they had just been moved around campus in an unauthorized fashion lol. So I learned to look closely at the campus crime statistics 
. But obviously many colleges’ statistics are much more accurate, serious and of concern.
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Didn’t say it did. But a crime rate of a nearby neighborhood is not necessarily an accurate indicator of the probability of a college student ending up as a victim of violent crime, especially given the emphasis placed on security by such institutions.
It seems that certain risks (like living near poor, minority, urban neighborhood) get played up while other risks get played down. For example you highlight Iowa State as a safe campus . . .
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With respect to the politics of student-on-student crime, this is the topic of Jon Krakauer’s Missoula.
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Ask your kids now in college how many times they’ve called for an escort when walking back to their dorm late at night (I’ll bet it’s a number close to zero). Ask your kid whether they take their laptop with them when they are in the library and are “just” going to talk to a friend “for a second”. Ask your kid if they’ve ever propped open a security door for a friend; how often they take the van to and from a workout, if they’ve ever snuck in a “friend of a friend” to their dorm who was not authorized to be there (dropped out, non-student, already graduated).
If the students don’t take security seriously, how many more empty vans should the college be running to make sure that nobody has to walk in a dark neighborhood, alone at night?
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You should re-read the thread. I never said that Iowa State was safe. I said that it was probably more likely to get robbed at gunpoint in your own house at Temple than Iowa State.
No one, myself included, is playing anything down. I said that there are many categories of violent crimes. Don’t make it anything bigger than that.
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My S22 attends UW Tacoma. If you look at the Clery Report, it’s a bastion of safety, basically. If you look at Fox News, the city of Tacoma is a crime-ridden hellhole.
We eliminated swaths of schools due to other personal safety factors. But neighborhood crime rates were not as high on the list as those other factors.
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Funny, that’s exactly what many seem to be doing when they exaggerate the risks of urban campuses like USC.
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There is a very wealthy town next to mine. They just released the crime statistics for 2022, and rates for different crimes have skyrocketed.
Theft of catalytic converters in 2021-- zero
Theft of catalytic converters in 2022- big number
Car theft in 2021- modest
Car theft in 2022- 30% jump
The police have taken great pains to explain that in both 2021 and 2022, virtually every single car theft happened in someone’s driveway with the doors unlocked and the key fob inside the car. That’s what happens in a wealthy town.
Meanwhile, rates of both crimes are unchanged in my town, one over. Less affluent, much more diverse, both subsidized and housing projects (the wealthy town has neither). Police theorize that when you live in a place perceived to be “more dangerous” you don’t do dumb stuff like leave your car unlocked with the keys in it.
I’m not a criminologist so I don’t know. But I find it fascinating. There are a lot of behaviors that contribute to, or avoid crime… and perhaps it’s true that when you are in an affluent place you just assume that you are safer than when you’re in a “more dangerous” place?
Freshman year someone held the door open for someone behind them who said they were visiting a friend and he ended up stealing a bunch of laptops from unlocked dorm rooms. Big wake up call for most of the students.
Have the talk with your students about keeping their dorm room locked and buy a dorm safe. Most theft seems to be crime of opportunities on most campuses. And stress to never walk alone in the dark, go to parties in pairs/groups, don’t leave friends behind, etc…
No campus is immune to safety issues.
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