<p>Is the campus and the surrounding areas of columbia safe?</p>
<p>please do a search, use the helpful threads post, go to the columbia website, or google "morningside heights".</p>
<p>in any event, this question has been answered IN LENGTH before</p>
<p>Rent "Marathon Man" from Blockbuster. It is a movie from the 1970's and stars Dustin Hoffman. His character was a Columbia student.</p>
<p>Yes, it's safe. If you're from NY you would know that the more people on the street, the safer the neighborhood. The area has several all-night grocery and drug stores, restaurants, and bars. Of course there are students, and other resdidents on the street going in and out of those establishments, walking dogs, coming home from work or dinner on the subway, etc. Real estate prices have gone up so much in the last 10 years that upscale people and trendier shops keep moving north into the Columbia area and the apartments have become extremely expensive. If you consider condo costs and rents an indicator of safety, it is certainly safe.</p>
<p>Back to my first thought, though, the more eyes, the better.</p>
<p>One caution - if you come home on the subway late at night, change from the express (number 2 and 3 trains) to the local (number 1) at 96t street. and continue up to 116th. The exress veers of to the east at 96th street and even though it has a stop labeled "116th" , it is at the far east end of the street, ath the wrong side of the park, where there are fewer students.</p>
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One caution - if you come home on the subway late at night, change from the express (number 2 and 3 trains) to the local (number 1) at 96t street. and continue up to 116th. The exress veers of to the east at 96th street and even though it has a stop labeled "116th" , it is at the far east end of the street, ath the wrong side of the park, where there are fewer students.
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<p>shhhhh, u aren't supposed to say that, the freshmen r supposed to learn this on their own....granted though, they tell you this during orientation yet half the freshman class makes this mistake. </p>
<p>more importantly however is the fact that this statement is misleading in that it understates how far the stop is and how relatively unsafe that neighborhood is. You should never go to the 116th and lenox stop on the 2/3 to get to columbia...not only late at night. The stop is not only about a mile away from columbia but to go directly would mean cutting through morningside park which is notoriously unsafe and poorly lit at night.</p>
<p>Lol I did that once at 4am and walked it with three drunk friends. Not the wisest decision of my life...</p>
<p>you think that, until you live here. I basically live at the 110th st stop on the 2/3. Dozens of people wander the streets here at night, some of them hobos, some of them families, some of them dealers, some of them police. The main point: there are always people around. You are never alone, and thus never in a high-risk position to get mugged. And none of the people floating around on the street are looking to do anything bad (except maybe sell you a dime bag, or holler at you if you're a hot girl).</p>
<p>There are parts of harlem i'd advise you not to wander around in at night. But the part that's south of 125th st and west of lexington ave is very safe.</p>
<p>i've been everywhere west of morningside, below 122nd at all times of night and not once did i see anything suspicious or unnerving, i've driven through harlem once at like 2-3am, some areas looked pretty shady, i'd advise against going there at night, in the daytime harlem is great esp. west side. columbia and morningside heights, always safe, always people within decent proximity.</p>
<p>right, shady as in "there are shady-looking people hanging around". those people are A) harmless and B) guarantors of your security. if there was nobody around AND the area was run down, then you'd have a problem.</p>
<p>well, when I said "driven through harlem" i meant east to west, the "shady-looking people" to be fair were mainly on the east side, but they were sparsely distributed and did give off a negative vibe. harmless? - I don't know. guaranteeing security? - not at all.</p>
<p>A negative vibe?</p>
<p>Look, I don't know how else to put this, but you don't have the first clue of what you're talking about. I've lived in morningside heights for 4 years and harlem for almost 1 1/2 now. I certainly didn't just do a "drive-through".</p>
<p>Go read Jane Jacobs' opus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and then get back to me on this discussion.</p>