<p>My mom likened it to Temple, and now I'm worried... is this true? : ( How safe do people feel on and off campus?</p>
<p>Very safe on-campus. We’ve got second-largest private police force, second only to the Vatican. Off-campus is all right, though it gets sketchy quite fast when you start heading too far south.</p>
<p>The campus is very safe; I would be honestly surprised if someone were mugged or harassed on school grounds. It’s simply unheard of.</p>
<p>Now, farther off, Chicago is just as any other city. The south side has little effect on college life; there are few interesting things south of campus, so few people every travel there. To the north, general city-safe rule apply: don’t travel alone at night, avoid poorly-lit spaces, etc.</p>
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<p>Considering our campus here at Temple is very safe, it sounds like you have nothing to worry about at UC.</p>
<p>I think idad has quoted his son as feeling “city-safe” at Chicago. Meaning, after adjusting for expectations, and realizing that wandering around as far as you can walk late at night might not be the best of ideas, you’ll begin to feel a part of the community. Many of my started feeling more comfortable with HP when they lived off-campus and had to deal with getting home at any time of the night. </p>
<p>It’s also interesting to see the patterns that people create for themselves… on my way home one night, I saw an older African-American woman enter her apt on Woodlawn Ave. As she entered, she turned her back to face the street and gave a quick check to her left and her right to see if anybody had followed her home. For her, this was probably a reflex more than anything else.</p>
<p>I grew up in an area where rich, middle-class, and poor all lived near each other with tons of tension to go around. While I lived on the “upper” side, it was not unusual to hear about things happening on my street or in my neighborhood. And funny that our elementary school more or less gave us a lesson on what to do if we ever got mugged, as kids would constantly threaten other kids for money and such. Funny that HP and my hometown have similar stats in terms of average income, but my town is in many ways less pleasant overall.</p>
<p>I am very familiar with the campuses at Temple and Chicago. There is practically no meaningful point of comparison, except that they are both within the city limits of a large city, and both near economically-depressed neighborhoods. (And both invest a lot in security.) They have completely different “feels” to them.</p>
<p>Diontechristmas – too bad about the Sixers, man – is right that Temple’s campus is very safe. It is also very urban – big, busy streets running through it, major subway line right there, really only about a mile from the central business district. While there are dorms on campus, for the most part it is not a residential school, and students live all over the city (the ease of public transportation to there helps – except for the current strike). And I think even diontechristmas would agree that most Temple students don’t stroll very far off campus without getting on a bus or subway first. Some of the most burned-out, crack-scourged areas of Philadelphia are within a few blocks of the edge of the campus, in almost every direction (except south, and that’s no great shakes, just not nearly as bad).</p>
<p>Chicago is in a quiet, upscale neighborhood about seven miles from the central business district, along the lake. If you are familiar with Philadelphia, Hyde Park is a lot like Mt. Airy – which is really nice, if not particularly exciting, and which borders on not-as-nice neighborhoods, too. The University of Chicago’s campus is much more spread out than Temple’s, and more integrated with the surrounding community. There are lots of trees and grass, and it’s something of a pain to get to the El. There are no kleig lights anywhere, so unlike Temple you can’t experience noon at midnight in the middle of campus. Chicago’s campus is not even really comparable to Penn’s – Penn is much more urban than Chicago, too.</p>
<p>There are areas near the university where Chicago undergraduates generally don’t go, but they aren’t as near or as enveloping as at Temple, and, frankly, they are very nice-looking compared to what you see in North Philly. Almost all of Chicago’s students live either on campus or in the surrounding community, as does much of the faculty and administration, so the university dominates its neighborhood in a way that Temple doesn’t.</p>
<p>Wow, JHS, that was one of the most helpful messages I’ve every read on CC. Thank you so very much!!</p>
<p>^ I agree! =D</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the replies! I’m feeling reassured now. :)</p>
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<p>JHS, we’re a residential school now.</p>
<p>dionte, I said that Temple has dorms, and it is building more. But . . . Temple has an undergraduate enrollment of about 21,500 at its main campus. Its website claims “almost” 8,000 students living “on or around” the main campus. (“Around” could include Center City, which is pretty far away, and the 8,000 students may include graduate students; it’s not clear.) The actual undergraduate dorms on or near the main campus have room for about 4,000 students, with another one coming on line soon, and more in the queue to be built.</p>
<p>Now, 4,000+ students is nothing to sneer at. That’s plenty to provide campus life, and I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. It’s more dorm space than the University of Chicago has (about 2,800). But give me a break! A substantial majority of Temple undergraduates do not live within, say, a mile of the main campus. Maybe 35% do; maybe it’s only 20%. The equivalent number for the University of Chicago would be somewhere between 95% and 99%.</p>
<p>I’m not meaning to dis Temple here. I’m just explaining why Temple and the University of Chicago have very, very different feels, and why neither is very much like the other.</p>