<p>Not long after I started working in the Smith College admission office, back in 1986, the father of one of the young women I'd just interviewed asked me about crime rates on the Smith campus. I could barely keep a straight face as I assured him that he had nothing to fear, and I couldn't wait to tell my colleagues that this nutty dad was worried about his daughter's safety in pastoral Northampton. But, by the time I left Smith, about 15 years later, not only were parents routinely asking me about security issues, but so were the candidates themselves. Moreover, Smith had an entire brochure on campus security alone ... written by yours truly, no less. Smith was (and still is) a very safe campus, but no one seemed to take that for granted any more. The times they were a changin'!</p>
<p>Now there's even a Web site where parents can check out the crime rates on campuses from coast to coast (though not at Smith ... at least not yet). See: UCrime</a> - University Crime</p>
<p>Schools publish an annual report disclosing campus security policies and three years worth of selected crime statistics.
Schools make timely warnings to the campus community about crimes that pose an ongoing threat to students and employees.
Each institution with a police or security department must have a public crime log.
The U.S. Department of Education centrally collects and disseminates the crime statistics.
Campus sexual assault victims are assured of certain basic rights.</p>
<p>Schools should have this information published on their websites.</p>
<p>Find out if the school has a police department or a security department. Some security departments are glorified babysitters and some schools have full fledged police departments.</p>
<p>The Clery Act data is very, very poor in quality. To give you an example - the Middlebury Pres. reports that almost one-third of Middlebury first-year students suffered an alcohol-related blackout in the two weeks prior to their last student survey. Yet, the Clery Act data shows only 19 alcohol violations for the entire year!</p>
<p>Many campuses have off-campus centers that deal with rape sexual assault victims. The centers assure confidentiality and do not report data to DOE or to the campus security. They will not show up in Clery Act data.</p>
<p>Agreed ... the UCrime site is very limited so far, but one feature that I DO like is that you can see at a glance whether there is one area close to campus that is more dangerous than others. Some urban schools, in particular, can border a relatively safe neighborhood on one side and a very dicey one on the other. </p>
<p>Web sites that only give crime stats (which is what most college Web sites provide) aren't as useful when it comes to warning new students that their dorm is on not-so-safe turf.</p>
<p>
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Some urban schools, in particular, can border a relatively safe neighborhood on one side and a very dicey one on the other.
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Yes, but many urban schools also have top notch departments in Campus Safety and take their work seriously.<br>
Look at Temple University - in a dangerous neighborhood in Philadelphia. Some parents may shy away but the kids I know who go there tell me they feel very safe. They have a very large police department that is very visible.
They also do a fine job of teaching college students how to protect themselves.</p>
<p>Some smaller rural schools don't have those resources and when something bad happens are ill-equipped to deal with it.</p>
<p>I think your best resource for finding out about crime on and around campus is asking students while you visit. Have lunch at the school's cafeteria and try to find some current students to sit with. If you get a few of them together at once to talk to you, you've got a pretty good chance of at least one of them being honest with what the situation is like.</p>
<p>Like, my old school's only real problem with crime was the constant bike theft (anything over the quality of Walmart was going to get stolen within a year or two) and the typical dorm theft. Other crime reports I remember them sending out involved a student getting hit by a random snowball, occasional muggings when students went into known bad parts of the city after midnight, and a couple of high schoolers that were shooting students with a BB gun from some bushes.</p>
<p>
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The Clery Act data is very, very poor in quality. To give you an example - the Middlebury Pres. reports that almost one-third of Middlebury first-year students suffered an alcohol-related blackout in the two weeks prior to their last student survey.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>mini--I'm STILL waiting for you to respond to post 29 of this thread:</p>
<p>To answer your question, if they were using either the Harvard School of Public Health Survey or the CORE survey from SIU, likely just over 50% took part in the survey. Obviously the President of Middlebury thought it reliable, or he wouldn't have gone out so far on a limb as to cite it in a speech to the parents of graduating seniors! But if you are really interested in the sample size, why don't you ask him? (Folks do know how to measure standard deviation and statistical significance based on sample sizes, you know - it is even required before most social scientists can sit for the Ph.D. general exams. It isn't like Monitoring the Future funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and conducted by the University of Michigan hasn't been conducted every year since 1976.)</p>
<p>Now it is true that it is possible that, in any two-week period, a third of the students didn't have an alcohol blackout. In some two week periods, it would likely have been less, in others, more. (Frankly, I thought the numbers mindboggling, since I am more familiar with those put out by the Duke Medical Center.) So....okay, I'll grant your point - all I can say with certainty, based on the statements of the Middlebury President, is that slightly less than one-third of all first-year students experienced the equivalent of a concussion during their first year of school. (The statistical odds of it not being more than that are about nil, but with that kind of number, why count?)</p>
<p>To be fair to Arcadia, this is a quote from the President of Middlebury in his Baccalaureate Address of May 24, 2008:</p>
<p>"The so-called collateral damage from irresponsible drinking is all too familiar to students, staff, and administrators who must regularly, literally and figuratively, clean up the mess. Dorm and property damage, disrespect of staff and fellow students, fighting, and sexual assaults are just some of the all-too-common incidents associated with alcohol abuse on campus. Our public safety office reports that more than half the calls they receive—more than half of all their calls—are related to alcohol or substance abuse.</p>
<p>Most frightening is the long-term impact binge drinking has on one’s brain and its development. Researchers have found that alcohol can do serious and irreparable harm to a teen’s and young adult’s brain. In a study completed by a team of neuroscientists, individuals aged 21-24, who drank enough to attain blood alcohol levels just below the legal limit (just below .08), recorded greater incidences of brain impairment—that is, a decrease in the ability to learn new information, form memories, and perform cognitive functions—than individuals who drank the same amount and were only four years older. This research supports the long-held view that alcohol has a significant destructive impact on the development of the brain before one reaches one’s mid-20s.</p>
<p>One has to wonder why, if the implications of irresponsible drinking are so clear, bright and aspiring individuals resort to binge drinking and using hard alcohol to the extent they do? The impact of such drinking, as self-reported by our own first-years, is quite evident and not buried only in scientific journals. Almost a third of our first-years who took part in a survey on alcohol use said that within two weeks of completing the survey they had experienced a blackout—a period of amnesia that can last for seconds, minutes, hours, and/or days that prohibits the natural development."</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Clery Act data is very, very poor in quality. To give you an example - the Middlebury Pres. reports that almost one-third of Middlebury first-year students suffered an alcohol-related blackout in the two weeks prior to their last student survey. Yet, the Clery Act data shows only 19 alcohol violations for the entire year!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>:rolleyes: Thats because the Clery reports only include incidents that end in an actual police report, a very small minority. Why would the police know about every time a student blacks out in their room or a friends place? They only report what they get called out to and make a report on.</p>
<p>
[quote]
my old school's only real problem with crime was the constant bike theft (anything over the quality of Walmart was going to get stolen
[/quote]
Bought my daughter a purple $65 Walmart bike on Monday. I get regular police report email updates from her college, univeristy of texas at austin. Two bikes were stolen Tuesday. Two bikes were stolen Wednesday.</p>
<p>She has a good strong lock on the bike, and a university registration sticker on it, but the main thing we are relying on is that no one really WANTS a $65 purple Walmart bike.</p>
<p>Another trick is to spraypaint it really ugly and unique colors. We all theorized that the bikes were stolen and shipped to NYC or something, because we never saw anyone riding bikes in the city other than students.</p>
<p>You should see if she can register the bike with the campus police. My school let you do that for any sort of expensive electronics (iPods, laptops, cell phones, etc) so if they were stolen you'd have some sort of record of them and possible way to distinguish them if they manage to find stolen goods.</p>
<p>You have no idea what survey the president was referring to, and you have no idea how many students responded. That's the fact I was getting at. Yet you feel compelled, again and again, to infer that 1/3 of Middlebury freshmen will black out in any two week period.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But if you are really interested in the sample size, why don't you ask him?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm not the one making absurd statements like the one you continue to make--with no data to back it up. Why don't YOU ask him!!!</p>
<p>
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Obviously the President of Middlebury thought it reliable, or he wouldn't have gone out so far on a limb as to cite it in a speech to the parents of graduating seniors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Obviously the President of Middlebury was trying to make a point. It's nice to have some data/facts to back up what you're saying regardless of where it came from. If he had said "According to the Harvard SPH survey," then we'd know a bit more about the sample size. But he didn't say what survey he was talking about, when it was conducted, or how many took part.</p>
<p>If you are so interested, WHY DON'T YOU ASK HIM? A respected scholar, a college president - YOUR COLLEGE PRESIDENT - takes the opportunity of addressing the parents of graduating seniors in his Baccalaureate address - and some might say inappropriately so - to cite data from a survey of students - HIS students, on HIS campus (YOUR campus) - to illustrate the subject of his entire speech. </p>
<p>Wonder if you'll be making any alumni contributions any time soon?</p>
<p>
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If you are so interested, WHY DON'T YOU ASK HIM?
[/quote]
As I said mini, I'm not the one running around an anonymous Internet web forum making sweeping assumptions about Middlebury's first-year class based on what Middlebury's president mentioned in a speech to graduating seniors. He said that nearly one-third of freshmen who TOOK PART IN A SURVEY said that they had essentially binge-drank within two weeks of taking the survey. To go from there to claiming that "1/3 of Middlebury freshmen will suffer a concussion from drinking in any two week period" without knowing anything about the survey, how it was administered, when it was given, how the questions were presented, or HOW MANY STUDENTS PARTICIPATED (10?, 50?, 100?, 350?) is irresponsible. This wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal--it was part of a speech that was intended to drive home a message about underage drinking on college campuses. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Wonder if you'll be making any alumni contributions any time soon?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Of course I will. Having gone to Middlebury, I know A LOT more about the school, the administration, and the student body than you ever will (despite what you might think). I've contributed to Middlebury every year since I graduated, and this year I was one of the 61% of alumni who gave (a record for Middlebury).</p>