<p>"New York remained the safest of the nations 10 largest cities in 2005, with about one crime reported for every 37 people, according to FBI statistics."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14910822/%5B/url%5D">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14910822/</a></p>
<p>This article would be very important to a student (or the parent of a student) contemplating an ED app to Columbia. As the parent of a Columbia senior I know that Morningside Heights is a very safe neighborhood but for those still researching schools the article has continued relevance. Those reading the article would not necessarily feel the need to respond.</p>
<p>A private note to Roger about your concern might have been more appropriate.</p>
<p>If the OP's intent is to imply that Columbia is relatively safe, then I'd dispute his contention. </p>
<p>New York may be safer than Philadelphia, and perhaps New Haven beyond the perimiter of the Yale campus, but that's about it.</p>
<p>As a Yale alum and Columbia prof, I dispute your disputing OP's contention.</p>
<p>I dispute the validity of your disputation, professor. </p>
<p>By the way, are you saying Columbia is "safer" than New Haven? Than Cambridge? Than Ithaca? Providence? Hanover? Princeton?</p>
<p>Here is a website that gives crime statistics through 2004...have a blast. Yes, the immediate area around the Columbia campus is generally safer than those around Harvard, Yale, Penn and Brown - but students need to practice street smarts in any urban environment. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ope.ed.gov/security/search.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.ope.ed.gov/security/search.asp</a></p>
<p>Depends how you describe "around the campus" and what you mean by "generally safer" and "practicing street smarts", Ellen, and on who's gathering the statistics.</p>
<p>Here...if you want the details read this. I am assuming that all of these schools obey the letter of the law when reporting their crime statistics. You don't need to be snarky. </p>
<p>You know as well as I do that Columbia is the safest urban Ivy campus. It doesn't mean that Harvard isn't a fabulous school. Geez. </p>
<p>....and read this.</p>
<p>That is not a safe assumption, Ellen... colleges are as illusive about so-called "crime" stats as they are about admissions numbers.</p>
<p>See, for example, <a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=26087%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=26087</a></p>
<p>The well-intentioned Clery Act is widely honored in the breach. It is impossible to compare stats from one school to the next when they have differing notions about what constitutes a reportable "crime" , what the boundaries of the "campus" are, etc. Is Wein Stadium included or not? What about the connecting corridor?? etc etc.</p>
<p>I certainly don't believe that Columbia is perfect in everyway but I don't believe that Columbia has been found to spin their crime stats. Morningside Heights is safer than Cambridge. </p>
<p>When I say "street smarts" and "generally safer" I mean that there are streets in any urban neighborhood that are probably good to avoid after dark. Even in a safe neighborhood you want to be where the streets are well lit and where there is foot traffic. You would be a fool to go for a run in Riverside Park at 1:00 AM...even in the safest large city in the country.</p>
<p>And with that I am going to bed. Sleep well.</p>
<p><<morningside heights="" is="" safer="" than="" cambridge="">></morningside></p>
<p>I certainly understand that it is important for Columbia advocates to convey this impression, just as it is important for Yale to counter New Haven's unsavory reputation. Images tend to linger.</p>
<p>"The perception of New York as a safer city, are a boon to the University's goal of attracting the most talented students and professors."</p>
<p>"(But) In spite of the enthusiasm created by the reported drop in crime, not everyone has accepted the data on plunging felonies at face value. Since 2004, leaders within the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the city's police union, have warned that the department's increased reliance on crime statistics, and the pressure that puts on precinct commanders to perform well numerically, might have prompted some of these to "cook the books," instructing officers to reclassify incidents into less serious crime categories in order to keep showing dramatic decreases in crime year after year..."</p>
<p>"Most visibly, the police reported 540 homicides last year, 26 less than in 2004, and a far cry from the 2,245 people who violently lost their lives in 1990. While the figure overshot the 500 homicide mark that police had hoped would not be exceeded, it was the lowest number of reported homicides in New York City since 1963. Six of those murders occurred within the confines of the 26th Precinct, which includes West Harlem and Columbia University, and has actually seen increases in reported felonies over the past three years."</p>
<p>The entire city of Cambridge has only had 6 murders in the last 3 years total, Ellen. <a href="http://www.cambridgepolice.org/reports/2005/Annual/adobe/murder.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.cambridgepolice.org/reports/2005/Annual/adobe/murder.pdf</a></p>
<p>Oh, I get it. It must be slow over at the Harvard board.</p>
<p>Did you even read the last PDF?</p>
<p>"This study put NYPD statistics to the test. Would non-NYPD crime data show crime falling in the city? Homicide statistics of the NYPD and the New York City Medical Examiner were compared over the period that NYPD statistics showed record-setting declines. The two were nearly a perfect match. For other crimes - robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft - NYPD statistics were compared to those derived from annual interviews with scientifically sampled residents of New York City, in which residents were asked whether they had recently been victimized by certain crimes. The interviews were all conducted as part of the on-going National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS. When these never-before-seen crime statistics from interviews with New York City residents were compared to NYPD statistics over the history-making period of falling police-recorded crime, results generally corroborated the
NYPD."</p>
<p>"... the aim was to learn whether independent crime data could corroborate official police data. We think our paper used a fair, unbiased test of the NYPD crime statistics. In our opinion, crime really did fall in New York City over the record-setting period that NYPD statistics said it did."</p>
<p>As a long time resident, I would have to say that NYC is definitely less safe than most people think. Near my house in Manhattan, just in the space of a couple years, 22-year old elite college graduates were robbed and shot to death in muggings, a half-dozen people were run over by runaway speeding trucks and there were hundreds of more minor incidents. I had friends who were mugged and beat up, and severely injured, right near Columbia, too.</p>
<p>The only thing different about NYC is you hear less about crime because everyone reads a different newspaper and nobody who lives in NYC really talks to anyone outside their immediate social circle. So you might feel safer even if you aren't. In my neighborhood, very few people I would talk to were even aware of the crimes I mentioned above - even when they literally happened on their doorsteps. In fact, the big NYC newspapers don't report crime like they do in smaller cities. The NYTimes barely covers crime at all. The others, like the NY Post, report a few murders and other grisly crimes each day, but the reports are buried in the back of the paper. Meanwhile, if there is a mugging at Harvard, everyone on the campus will know about it the same day, and there's a good chance it will make the front page of the local papers. </p>
<p>Regarding the crime statistics, they are easily manipulated because very different land areas are compared. NYC's crime statistics include vast swaths of suburban Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn, while the crime statistics for other cities typically measure only the downtown area and immediate surrounds. In the central areas of other cities as they are measured, which sometimes only consist of a few square miles of land (particularly in New England), there are obviously fewer residential areas (a smaller "denominator"), and the population base that exists, due to the age of housing in a central city, is more likely to consist of lower-income residents or immigrants crowded into apartments. If you look at crime on a level that compares all cities equally, e.g., from a "metropolitan area" perspective, NYC is definitely not one of the safest cities. Also, NYC's crime drop since 1990 is by no means unique to NYC.</p>
<p>According to Harvard's police department, Columbia is slightly safer (see below - Harvard is the most dangerous Ivy, worse than UPenn), but that's only because Columbia's campus is a tiny, pathetic one block strip of grass and is fenced off from the rest of the city. Wander a block away and you are no longer within the fenced off fortress.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html</a></p>
<p>i dunno, i'm a very petite white girl who lived in morningside heights, off campus towards harlem, and i felt perfectly fine walking home alone at night.</p>
<p>Good morning,</p>
<p>If this report (stalcommpol) is your standard - and if I am reading it properly - there is more than a 15 percent difference in crime rates between Harvard and Columbia. </p>
<p>Also, coming to the area of a BB that deals with a specific college/university and using language like the following "but that's only because Columbia's campus is a tiny, pathetic one block strip of grass and is fenced off from the rest of the city." makes me question your motives.</p>
<p>I didn't mean to be pejorative. That's just how many people in the area refer to it. And compared to, say, Harvard (and it is comparisons we are making here), it is definitely tiny.</p>
<p>Poster X,
Your rather unsavory disquisitions always remind me of the style of other well-known posters you always try to one-up.
Putting down others will never lift you past the perception others have of you on CC.
"Tiny, pathetic one block strip of grass" certailnly is not "how many people in the area refer to it."
Yale and Columbia do not need guerilla tactics to stand on their own.</p>
<p>I agree, but the point was wholly about the statistics, not the campus. To that end, exaggerating about how small the campus is (e.g., calling it a "postage stamp," another common characterization of Columbia) , as a point of comparison, is not out of line.</p>