<p>sarasdad, I think you’re overreacting a little bit. It sounds like your daughter is taking necessary precautions. Putting the couch in front of the door might be a little excessive, granted, but if it makes them feel safer, I don’t see the harm. </p>
<p>This kind of smash and grab thievery is something they could experience anywhere. Living independently as adults they may experience this. This could happen to your house, too. Rather than panic, just continue to encourage them to take reasonable precautions. Remind them to lock their doors, to keep their cell phones in their rooms, to know the number for campus safety (have it on speed dial). Even if the cops can’t catch the thieves, at least they can make a report. Maybe look into getting insurance for their more expensive items. Remind them to be vigilant, they may witness a break-in and be able to report that. </p>
<p>No campus is 100% safe. These things happen at nearly every college. In fact, much worse things than this happen at colleges each year. Crime should be taken seriously, it should be prosecuted and punished, but other than removing your daughters to a locked room in a safehouse, there’s no way to completely insulate them from the possibility of crime. So they need to be aware, to take precautions, and use their common sense.</p>
<p>Smash and grab does sound alarming and I would be concerned if it was occurring near my kids as well. They have taken care to always live where there is an electronic outer security (tho S didn’t think all that much of some of it). It helps reduce BUT NOT ELIMINATE crime from random people. It also protects their bikes and vehicles more than if it is just left on the street.</p>
<p>I recall staying at one hotel where I accidentally learned that the old-fashioned keys issued opened ANY room door. I piled all the furniture against the door both of the nights I slept there & vowed never to return. It was the only hotel inexpensive enough to be below the low state per diem I earned. :(</p>
<p>Just a thought, but eons ago when we parents were in college, the same things happened, but there was no email, no facebook, no tweeting, no cell phones. We didn’t even have TV’s in our rooms. There was one crummy TV in the basement that barely got 3 channels. How would we have found out about robbery in off campus neighborhoods? Word of mouth? Unless there had been something really unusual going on, our campus newspaper wouldn’t have reported it, and we all lived in a little bubble of innocence. Our parents NEVER would have found out about crime around our school campus. They lived on the other side of the state, for heavens sake.</p>
<p>Nice thought but not true I think. Many college towns have attracted more diverse populations including urban poor from large cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland etc. The result has been an increase in street crimes such as muggings and robberies in campus areas that never existed before. . It has also been reflected in more problems in the local schools, etc.</p>
<p>I disagree that the apparent increase has to do with the migration of the urban poor. Many college towns have extremely high property prices and taxes, they often actually price out their own native populations, let alone low-income people from other cities. College towns are also less likely to have the kinds of unskilled labor jobs in abundance that lower-income people are seeking, not to mention with so many students its harder to compete for those unskilled or less skilled positions. Colleges are cutting budgets, so they’re hiring fewer custodial and maintenance staff. Small college towns are also less likely to be able to offer things like public housing, public transportation networks, public health clinics that are more centered in urban areas. So I don’t see that there is so much to attract large swaths of urban poor? Of course, there is nothing to stop a person from coming in by bus or car and stealing items, but I doubt that’s what’s happening. In fact in every single college theft case that I know of, the thieves have been other students, either from the same campus or from nearby campuses; or occasionally in the case of bike theft they’ve been local teenagers. </p>
<p>Instead, I think it is as others here have noted. It seems like crime is increasing on campuses largely because people are more aware of it. Colleges take it more seriously, they’re disseminating information widely to parents and students, etc. Thus creating the impression of an increase when there may not in fact be one.</p>
<p>Can somebody refer to some statistics that actually show a broad increase? I’m sure crime has increased at some specific campuses, but it has probably gone down at others. I certainly observe that many campuses have much more security than they did 30 years ago.</p>
<p>Much of the crime will be nearby in the off campus areas such as the Ave at UW. Larger college towns like Madison, Ann Arbor, C’Ville have seen this trend. No, it’s not happening at the tiny rural schools as much.
Typical incidents</p>
<p>Crime overall has been falling in the US since the 1990s. Certainly, some areas, including presumably some college areas, have gone counter to this trend. But, unless the criminals not committing crime elsewhere all moved to the college areas to commit crimes, it is hard to believe that it is generally worse in college areas than it was in the 1990s.</p>
<p>I have to say that eons ago, college students didn’t have much of value to steal. Kids didn’t always have ipods, iphones, ipads, lightweight tvs, electronic game systems, credit cards, gift cards, laptops, designer clothes, expensive sports equipment, etc. Unfortunately, students today make excellent targets for theft.</p>
<p>Still, there was enough theft back then that college dormitory staff were constantly reminding residents to keep the doors and windows locked, not prop open the main doors, etc…</p>
<p>ucb- in my area, the crime decrease was a matter of pride. Until folks learned it was the reporting guidelines that had changed. Wasn’t this also a recent hot-button about NYC? </p>
<p>Smithie- nothing to stop a person from coming in by bus or car and stealing items. That’s exactly what’s happening. The troublemakers may not live in our little part of town, but they get here: high incomes surrounding the school, comfortable attitude among the people who live in this part of town and unaware students who own target goods. The difference may be schools that are distinctly isolated. My area is not, in general, high-crime, but many college kids aren’t watching their backs.</p>
<p>With some exceptions it’s probably not worse than when we were in college in the 70s. Summer was the time of year I remember the college posting notes about strangers being spotted on campus - it was a small school and everyone knew everyone - and one summer one female beat off a guy climbing in her dorm window with her tennis racquet (he got caught). But our stereo systems were huge (if you were lucky to have one), no cell phones, no laptops, no TVs and all that stuff so not much to “steal.”</p>
<p>My daughter is in an on-campus apartment, but it’s way over on the edge of campus. She is on the first floor in a room that faces out to a small grassy area with woods beyond it. Her desk is sideways next to her window, which means someone looking in from outside her window gets a lovely of her laptop, sitting there all nice and shiny. (Not to mention all the pink decorations - clearly the room of a female.) She claims that since there are small bushes between her window and the sidewalk, which probably 4 or 5 feet away, no one will get close enough to see the laptop, and “no one ever walks on that sidewalk anyway.” I’m not sure how many times I can remind her to save all her work on the college’s server, because if someone breaks the window and grabs that laptop… I don’t know of any instances of that happening on her campus, although I know there have been car break-ins in the largest parking lot on campus. </p>
<p>All the windows in her first floor apartment can be opened. She was the first of the 4 suitemates to move in, and the first thing her daddy did was to go around to every window and make sure they were all LOCKED. They have a/c so there’s no reason to open them…</p>
<p>Lafalum, absolutely she should keep those windows locked when they aren’t there or when they go to bed. I’ve been robbed twice in my life when I was young (not in college) and both times it was scurvy characters climbing in the window (when I wasn’t home) in the summer when I had not “locked” the windows. Once the police told me there had to be two and one was “boosted” into my window. Many college are idyllic but stuff still happens.</p>
<p>I think it’s really hard to compare without some good statistics. Those articles barrons posted are all troubling–but twenty years ago, if would have been difficult for him even to find those articles, if they existed. I think the power of anecdotal evidence becomes more powerful as anecdotes gain the ability to travel across the entire nation.</p>
<p>You can’t always count on the statistics that the colleges provide. They are not consistent when they collate them across colleges. Also, if the college has its own “security force”, often things that the local police would consider crimes do not get reported to the police and not included in the statistics. One piece of advice for your kids is that if an actual crime happens, make sure it is reported to the POLICE, not just campus security. Recently a college was identified that only counted rapes in their statistics when the perpetrator was caught/crime solved.</p>
<p>A few other things we look for:
Every campus has a blue light system. But not all of them respond when you just hit a button. Some of them require you to dial an extension (we visited a college yesterday where that was the case). In a real emergency (someone chasing your or a serious injury), you shouldn’t have to dial to get a response. And you should be able to see the next blue light from each one so if you have to keep running, you just go to the next one and hit that button so security can see where you are going.<br>
Some campuses have alarms on dorm doors so if the door is propped open for more than a couple of minutes, campus security is notified. Most of these are schools that have had unfortunate instances with intruders already. Many colleges do not, but it definitely improves the safety of the dorm if the doors can’t be left propped open without an alert to security.</p>
<p>Hunt, 20-30 years ago I subscribed to the college papers so I still knew about things–just a bit later. Muggings and stickups of students were very very rare. It might have happened but I do not recall any.</p>