Fair points.
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I don’t really care about all of those variations of “what if’s”. …which is why that the answer to the OP’s question will vary a lot from one person to another.
For those additional topics of concern that you brought up, how would YOU figure out the answers to those so you could make a decision?
Read the campus newspaper. Walk around campus in the evening if you can…see if kids are walking in small groups, on the security vans, taking city public transportation. Read the local newspaper…
You don’t want your kid in a place which shuts down at 5:30 pm due to safety concerns, nor do you want them somewhere where students act like it’s a perpetual Mardi Gras where the kegs are flowing every night on the steps of every dorm.
I don’t know.
When my own kids were choosing colleges, we mostly trusted our instincts and went with the reputation of the area. Both my kids attended college in working class communities. Crime exists everywhere. I trusted that my kids would be sensible, I trusted the campus police, I trusted local police. Is that naive? I couldn’t allow myself, or worse, them, to be fearful of unknowns.
I am doubtful that Dartmouth actually has a worse crime problem than a huge school such as ASU. I suspect that at many of the big colleges you listed, many more crimes occur in and around off campus housing. I suspect that overall, and considering unknowable factors such as I mentioned, the actual numbers of crimes against college students is probably similar.
At many of the large schools most students live off campus. If they get robbed going to a bar two miles away from campus does it show up in the campus crime statistics? If a student gets raped at an off campus apartment, she is going to call the local police, not the campus police, again not likely to be in the campus crime report. I wouldn’t put much wait on these statistics. There is too much variation in how things can be reported.
Yep, my D’s school reports everything in the entire town, even if it doesn’t involve students at all. It definitely skews the crime stats up but personally I think that’s better than underreporting.
I agree with the other posters who suggested visiting at night and seeing how the campus feels and where students are going. The reports are definitely not the whole story.
That works for a college town, not for a big city. You can’t do that in NY, or Philadelphia, or any other big city where the school is just a part of the city, and not the main thing in the city.
Do we really need to know about the love triangle murder in the surrounding town to evaluate our kid’s safety? Walk the campus and read the school paper to understand the safety climate. The drinking and drug numbers are useless anyway.
The muskie I caught when I was 13 gets bigger every time I tell the story…
Unless the student would be influenced to partake more or less depending on how big the drinking or drug culture is.
I think the drinking and drug numbers are probably more reflective of how strict the campus is, rather than how much drinking and drug use is actually happening. Some schools enforce their rules more than others. Do RAs just tell students to stop what they’re doing, report it, or sit down and join in?
Crime can be serious and I always tell my kids to travel in packs and never leave a man/woman behind.
Somewhat funny story. D19 moved into an off campus house this year. Those houses are known for having signs. Well some other student the first week decided to steal their sign. But Dad had installed a Ring Camera. D19 sent the video to the local police dept. Then the PD shared it on their twitter and facebook. It wasn’t the best video, but about 4 days later the sign was returned.
We did have the landlord install in some motion activated lights around the house.
After a week of robberies, beatings and a dorm lobby being overrun with teens looking to harass students, a Temple police officer was shot and killed last night.
The shame is that it’s not even shocking.
A 10-minute pass through and around a campus is all it takes to assess the safety. That is why school visits are so important.
The one news article mentioned a senior who started an Instagram page reporting the crime in the Temple area, not just the campus. So for any parents, it’s keep_us_safe_tu
And the Temple admin reiterated that the Security force (yellow vests) on campus only report crime. They do not intervene to help. As was seen in the video of the group of teens beating and kicking a man this past week.
I commented upthread about UMN being on DS23 list and my concerns. As much as he loved the school he committed somewhere else. The other school was a great fit and he decided not to do accepted students day at UMN for a couple of reasons. ONE was the crime. I am on the parent safety page where area crime alerts are posted by the PD and there have been shots fired in the area 2 of the 3 weeks that I’ve been on it. One of the draws of UMN was that it was a land grant university in the middle of a city. They give each student a light rail pass. DS had plans to use the heck out of that pass. Unfortunately, the LRT isn’t really deemed safe in that area right now and people are warned not to take it.
I’ve lived in Boston and Chicago, so I’m no stranger to city life, but I was uneasy during our visit when I was approached by pan handlers walking in and out of two different pharmacies. (I was alone as DS and DH were grabbing a bite somewhere). I then had a young girl that was asking for money and personal information start walking with me. I was alone and joined a group of other people at a cross walk and acted as if I knew them. I have the skills to be street smart, but this was mid day on the weekend. A few weeks ago, there was an armed robbery outside the hotel (considered a good hotel) we stayed at bordering campus.
While it’s not the whole reason we took it off the list, when it came to “deciding factors” it did play a part. I am glad that I won’t be up worrying when he’s out and he realized that constantly being on high alert would impact his “college experience”.
(From my understanding, there was a shift in policing following the George Floyd incident that affected how the MPD was integrated into the University PD. There are current city/university task forces examining these issues. Hopefully, they will resolve as UMN is a great institution and deserves to attract great candidates).