<p>No. College safety is not declining. Every college has those blue-light alarm boxes. We never had those.</p>
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<p>If every theft from a dorm or apartment that occurred due to an unlocked door or window made it to the paper, there would be a lot of articles on those in the paper. As it was when I went to school, only major or violent crimes, or those that became politicized, made the paper.</p>
<p>Did a little research </p>
<p>According to a recent Department of Justice study 1 in 4 (25%) of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period. I have two girls away at college. Do the math and tell me I am over reacting.</p>
<p>sarasdad, there is at least one lengthy thread about those statistics–they are pretty thin, in my opinion.</p>
<p>OP, there are two schools of thought regarding assault. One is that trouble or potential trouble always exists- and that women should always be vigilant and make the wisest choices they can. The other is that the studies are imperfect and often lump various sorts of confrontations under “attempted rape.” </p>
<p>I have daughters in college and warn them that their safety should trump their tendency toward overconfidence.</p>
<p>I have a D. We have done all we could to encourage her to make good and safe choices. She has always lived in OK housing with a security gate. She told us she has only had one incident so far that she felt awkward in, where some males called her from across the street and tried to approach her, she biked away from them as fast as she could and toward her crowded campus.</p>
<p>I agree that statistics can be overblown and it’s very hard to know what is included and how they are collected. When I was in college, back in the day, neither I nor any female I knew had been assaulted. When I was pledging my freshman year, I did meet one woman who had been raped years prior. There were one or two reported rapes at the U I attended as an undergrad as well. I felt perfectly safe there for all my time as an undergrad & never told my parents about the rape reports because I didn’t want them to worry about something neither they nor I could do anything about.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how many of the statistics involve alcohol, but expect that a fair number of them do.</p>
<p>I do know that the one and only time I was burglarized was when we went out & everyone had one or more alcoholic beverages (we were all over the then-legal age of 18). We slept soundly while someone broke into the room at the YWCA we were all sleeping in & walked off with all our wallets! The thief was never apprehended tho there were some signs it was an “inside job.” I felt very traumatized by that for nights.</p>
<p>I do not consider theft of a laptop left on a desk while you went to get coffee that dangerous nor is it often reporting. I am concerend with face to fact theft under threat of physical force or weapons, general assaults and rapes, and home invasion type robberies–often with weapons. All scary stuff for most students.</p>
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<p>You would need to go to the colleges website and look up the past history of this to know for sure. Then you need to find out out long they have been reporting the information, if it has always been reported in the same way (do they consider a break in the same way they did 20 years ago) etc. </p>
<p>My guess is that it is not an epidemic but it is just more likely to be reported now and that parents are more likely to be notified.</p>
<p>Again, thugs attack</p>
<p>[Couple</a> mugged near UW campus](<a href=“http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_73faccba-ee93-11e0-b4ea-001cc4c03286.html]Couple”>http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_73faccba-ee93-11e0-b4ea-001cc4c03286.html)</p>
<p>I had a couple of parents on another blog recommend a security product named Door Brake. I looked it up a doorbrake.com and I am going to try it. Anybody else use this device for there kids college housing?</p>