<p>Thanks, MerryXmas, for the info. While I once again disagree with newmassdad that Hyde Park is as safe as a place like Cambridge, having spent much of my childhood in Cambridge, and that having expensive homes means the disappearance of muggers (check out the Upper West side of Manhattan at around 100th street and Amsterdam and north...) I do agree with the sentiment that things are improving. Moral of the story: act prudently, travel in groups at night, and better safe than sorry. Safety is just something to be conscious of.</p>
<p>there's a cambridge in New York?</p>
<p>Sarahbara, </p>
<p>Have you seen any of the Harvard safety bulletins? Have you seen the crime stats in Cambridge? It is not all heaven there. </p>
<p>I think we are getting into the realm of hair splitting, and maybe disgreement for the sake of disagreement. To quibble over safety differences between Hyde Park and Cambridge seems silly, when the real differences are between ANY urban campus and, say, Cornell. Although it's interesting that even rural campuses reputed to be safe have their problems, too.</p>
<p>"When I visited, I did feel really safe. There are those Emergency Phonelines (forget what they are really called) EVERYWHERE!! You should check it out yourself! Very nice campus indeed!"</p>
<p>....are you sure that doesnt just mean that they have a bigger need for them than other schools?....think about it...."</p>
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<p>having looked at new haven's crime stats i'd say it's worse there, but i didn't hear of yale having a scheme like that. it probably does mean the area is unsafe but it's reassuring to know as much as possible is being done about it. unfortunately big cities have more crime, but i wouldn't let it put me off being there. </p>
<p>btw, no university in my country (england) puts any effort like that into safety measures, so i'm very impressed by chicago. i've never seen anything like it from the london universities. or oxford, which is a surprisingly unsafe city sometimes. someone got shot literally outside my house a few months ago, and lots of people i know have been mugged but the university chooses to ignore it. nottingham is a real ghetto these days too</p>
<p>i'd suggest if anyone here is thinking about semesters in england or a degree here that they learn to be a lot more streetsmart first. feel free to send me a message about it</p>
<p>I like that UChicago is proactive as far as alerting kids, some of them new to big city life, as to how to be safe. Maybe that causes some to think that the campus is less safe than other urban campuses. I don't think it is. Traveling off campus?--use common sense and be aware. Don't wander into dicey neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Be aware that there is a certain amount of stuff that happens in urban areas. I live in an urban area which is "perceived" to be fairly safe--upper middle class neighborhood mixed with some low income apts and such in a "Mayberry" like town near Oakland, CA. Yet, yesterday there was a lockdown at my D's middle school because police were chasing an armed robber through the neighborhood. This stuff happens in urban areas--ALL urban areas.</p>
<p>little Louise:</p>
<p>yales does in fact have a security system ("Blue Boxes") everwhere, as do most US colleges.</p>
<p>University of Chicago is dangerous!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?</p>
<p>Like… being safer than Harvard, WashU, MIT, Penn, Brown, Columbia, Stanford, University of Michigan, Yale, Berkeley and only slightly more dangerous than Princeton?</p>
<p>[Most</a> Dangerous Colleges 2010 - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Most Dangerous Colleges 2010”>Most Dangerous Colleges 2010)</p>
<p>I don’t know about you guys but I don’t think having 128 forcible rapes at Harvard over three years (in comparison to 15 at UChicago over that same period of time) sounds safe…</p>
<p>This seven-year-old thread really didn’t need reviving, especially for Hewhoknows’ moronic post.</p>
<p>Chicago is not a lot more (or less) dangerous than any number of similar urban universities in the United States, including (but not limited to) Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Rochester, Syracuse, Tufts, MIT, NYU, Berkeley, USC, Duke, Vanderbilt, Michigan, Wisconsin. If you really can’t handle occasionally seeing poor people who may be a different race than you, then find somewhere else to go to college.</p>
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<p>Oh please - Hyde Park, Kenwood, Beverly and Morgan Park are hardly “ghetto.” And to suggest that the tiny little square that you mention is the only “safe area” of downtown is ludicrous. You seem to have forgotten Lincoln Park and Lake View, for starters.</p>
<p>Total unmitigated utter silliness. Just ridiculous. Including the suggestion that somehow the Midway Airport area is especially safe. And when, exactly, were police officers “gunned down in cold blood in those neighborhoods”? Have you actually been there in, say, the past 30 years?</p>
<p>Hyde Park is a lovely, affluent community that is “safe” in the same way Park Slope or the Upper West Side or Cambridge are safe. They are all urban neighborhoods; they all have some crime. Heck, between students, faculty, and staff there are probably 25,000 people working in and around the University of Chicago every day, and with that number of people there is always going to be some level of crime, even if they were in the middle of nowhere. Do you really think then-Senator Obama lived in the middle of some violent battlefield before he moved his family to Washington? But it’s not just Hyde Park and Kenwood. The South Side of Chicago is not some unmitigated mass of horribleness. There are other middle class and affluent neighborhoods here and there. I have two law school classmates who live within a few blocks of each other in another South Side neighborhood, Evergreen Park; both are partners in downtown firms and don’t need to live anywhere they don’t want to.</p>
<p>is there a website to check which streets in hyde park are safe? </p>
<p>and any recommendations to which no-pet grad student housing is in the best location (safety wise and grocery shopping. I wont have a car).
[Property</a> Comparisons](<a href=“http://rs.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/property_comparisons.shtml]Property”>http://rs.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/property_comparisons.shtml)
[Graduate</a> Student Housing Locations](<a href=“http://rs.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/locations.shtml]Graduate”>http://rs.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/locations.shtml)</p>
<p>These fear-mongers are nothing but idiots.</p>
<p>Hyde Park is one of Chicago’s safest areas. The people saying that Hyde Park isn’t safe are simply racist, pure and simple. That’s not a charge I often make, either. Hyde Park is statistically extremely safe, and the only people some people feel uneasy is because they’re racist and scared of black people.</p>
<p>Hewhoknows is a ■■■■■. This is its only thread. </p>
<p>I lived in Hyde Park 25 years ago - it was safe then, it is safer now.</p>
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<p>Really? All the way to the distant cushy suburb of Munster, Indiana? You have no credibility. I guess anywhere you read of any crime, to you it is ‘continuous and nonstop in that entire area’." </p>
<p>No thank you for reviving a thread that is 7 years old to stir this pot with your wide paintbrush. You are no truth-teller as I can tell first-hand from having lived in NW Indiana. You’re the kind of witness that gets torn apart on cross-examination because you overreach and generalize impossibly.</p>
<p>Your vision is highly skewed and not helpful to college-seeking students trying to do honest research and make sound decisions.</p>
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<p>And Beverly; that’s another absolutely gorgeous neighborhood on the South Side, where the only crime you’ll have to deal with is how much the pubs charge for beer when the South Side Irish parade takes place.</p>
<p>did anybody notice that hewhoknows specifically created a login to dig a seven year old thread to post scare mongering diatribes about UChicago’ safety issue?</p>
<p>This is clearly a poster with an ax to grind with a malicious intent.</p>
<p>My bet is, this is the same person who cycles through multiple logins to spew venom at U Chicago because of his/her bad experience when he was a student there. The same person who posted a reply to my thread looking for a nice adult budget restaurant near U Chicago to take my son to: he recommended a dinky fast food joint.</p>
<p>OK. I am stooping low, responding to this kind of a thread, but hey, it’s Friday night, and I have time on my hand…</p>
<p>
This post can pretty much be used as a response to every thread on safety concerns. It’s worth repeating. </p>
<p>
Seriously? The only ghetto a few blocks north/east of campus is the “student ghetto” of Mac Apartments. A few blocks west only really gets you to Cottage Grove and Washington Park. A few blocks south is the Green Line at 63rd. There may be gangs in neighborhoods south and west of Hyde Park, but that by no means merits the stigma you give when you talk about supposed “bruthas from da hood.”</p>
<p>Maybe Hewhoknows is just trying to scare the competition away.</p>
<p>The difference in opinion might have something to do with lingering perceptions. My mother, who lived in Chicago from 1970-1995 or so, said that Hyde Park was a dangerous ghetto. But the recent efforts to gentrify the area have changed it quite a bit. IMO it’s probably no more dangerous than New Haven or Cambridge.</p>
<p>Hyde Park was never a “dangerous ghetto”. What is true about Hyde Park, especially in Chicago terms, is that it’s closer to the ghetto, dangerous or not, than most other well-to-do neighborhoods in the city, and also that it has been a multiracial neighborhood for decades in a city (and region) whose neighborhoods were otherwise mostly very, very segregated until fairly recently. So affluent whites who lived in North Side neighborhoods or the northern suburbs would feel uneasy there, because they were not used to seeing lots of African-Americans in their communities. And, to be sure, there was probably more petty theft and minor street crime than in Lincoln Park – hardly enough to make it a dangerous ghetto, but enough to make suburbanites worry about all those black people they saw.</p>