<p>Georgetown is in the nicest, most upscale part of Washington DC. Georgetown, in addition to being a university, is a neighborhood, and one where some of the wealthiest people in the city live (politicians, especially). Don't worry about this isolated incident.</p>
<p>On another note, the schools located in the most questionable areas often have some of the best security for that very reason. For example, the University of Chicago employs a full police force just for the campus since the university, although itself in a nice area called Hyde Park, is in the middle of the south side of Chicago just a few blocks away from ghettos.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of rapes, sexual assaults, and assaults on campuses are perpetuated by students upon other students. 75% of them are associated with heavy and/or binge drinking. Avoid heavy drinking schools and you are in a safer environment, regardless of location.</p>
<p>my parents were once visiting uchicago just because they like seeing college campuses, and right outside they saw guys on corners waving around brown paper bags</p>
<p>"oh, are we by the ballpark? are those peanuts?"</p>
<p>Even a very safe school can have bad things happen to students. It happens.</p>
<p>I'd take stats with a grain of salt, in this case. A school with, for instance, an apparently high number of sexual assaults, might just have an unusually high reporting rate (which would be a <em>good</em> sign). Or it could be genuinely dangerous. You can't tell from the number alone.</p>
<p>"Students typically feel safe around peers, but 80 percent of all crimes on campus are committed by other students. Alison Kiss, program director for Security on Campus, Inc., an advocacy group in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, says the first six weeks of college require special vigilance. Kiss refers to this period as the red zone and says that's when her group sees a 30 percent spike in calls from student victims: "It's when incoming freshmen are most vulnerable to alcohol abuse, hazing and crimes like acquaintance rape. It's the most dangerous period of a student's campus life."</p>
<p>So you need to be aware that you are going to school with a substantial number of potential and actual felons, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the neighborhood the school is in.</p>
<p>All the colleges mentioned above are very safe. Most students have no problems at any of them, and most of the students who do have problems have engaged in unsafe behavior (like walking around alone late at night). I have never been convinced that campus safety is a rational reason to distinguish among any of the colleges typically discussed on this forum.</p>
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gprime, that article was really interesting. i would have thought that UChicago and NYU would be more dangerous, as they are in big, metropolitan areas. I guess it's not so much the city where the campuses are located at, rather the NEIGHBORHOOD where it is at??
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<p>The way the article I linked to spoke of said schools, it appears more that the issue is campus security efforts. In other words, even schools in bad areas, like UChicago, can be very safe ON CAMPUS or in the area directly around it, since they have a broader and better funded security set-up.</p>
<p>^ haha that's what everybody at school who knows me says whenever i ask them a question! they're voting me for "most gullible" for senior standouts if we have that category - -" </p>
<p>is it like drug related though? i want to know in case i see people waving brown bags on street corners in the future...</p>
<p>^ Nope. Crime-filled...and yes, Durham is a city and an Urban area. It's part of the Triangle - one of the largest Metros in the US. (Raleigh-Durham-Cary-Chapel Hill)</p>
<p>Neighborhoods have almost nothing to do with rates of college rapes, sexual assaults, and assaults. Who is admitted, and on-campus bingeing has almost everything to do with it, and are the source of the vast majority of on-campus felonies.</p>
<p>If you are welll-aware that some of your fellow students are actual felons, or potential felons, you'll be fine.</p>