<p>Hello everyone. I thought you should be made aware of an incident that recently occurred near JHU campus:</p>
<p>A very sad incident. Though not a student at Homewood this is a loss for the university community as a whole. I don’t know a single person who would have walked from Penn Station to Charles Village 11:30pm alone in Baltimore. Just like around Yale or UPenn or Columbia or any where, walking alone in a city at night is dangerous anywhere.</p>
<p>My condolences to his family and the JHU community.</p>
<p>Ah hah, OP got rejected from JHU :D</p>
<p>Well, this incident should be viewed with more caution than a case of sour grapes. JHU has an amazing security system but Baltimore is a city with a lot of safety concerns. While I agree with Wealth of Information that nobody should be walking alone or even with somebody at that hour, in that area, the incident speaks to the very real need to become very proactive in assuring safety. This seems to cross with the very bravado of youth but there are many areas in Baltimore where being proactive is critical. Students tend to move in groups in areas outside of the campus and parents/students should plan to spend a few more $$$ making sure that they can travel safely across the city. Just my NSHO.</p>
<p>^^This is true. There is no reason why one’s time at Hopkins cannot be a reasonably safe as well as fun and highly rewarding educational experience. but it does require good judgment and decision making including, for example, knowing when to take a taxi as opposed to walking through sketchy neighborhoods late at night. </p>
<p>Kids who grew up in urban areas know this stuff instinctively–but it must be learned by kids from the suburbs and rural areas. Actually, developing these type of street smarts is in itself a pretty good educational result. Speaking for myself, I originally came from a pretty safe suburban area to Hopkins. The street smarts I developed in Baltimore have stayed with me and were very useful when I later moved to DC–which may actually be more dangerous than Baltimore due to the “target rich” environment. </p>
<p>Ironically, sketchy neighborhoods can actually be safer than nicer ones because you tend to keep your guard up in sketchy ones and may tend to relax too much in nicer ones. One of my housemates from my Hopkins years was stabbed and killed on the UCLA campus where he was a graduate student. UCLA is in a pretty nice neighborhood of LA–but he was leaving his lab late at night and I suspect was lulled by the seemingly safe environment–particularly compared to Baltimore. He was a pretty big guy too–so you never know.</p>