<p>Really, is there a lack of campus housing? There’s a couple of nice new dorms by the Reily Center.</p>
<p>Many people do opt to live on Calhoun or Palmer. Those areas were not damaged by the Hurricane. </p>
<p>However, I would not recommend living off campus. First off, you’ll miss the social life. Second, parking is a pain. And third, you do stand a good chance of being robbed, whether at your car or in your apartment. I have many friends/family that live in the Tulane area, and most have either been burglarized, car stolen, victim of an armed robbery. </p>
<p>I’m sure this is not something unique to Tulane, or any other city. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens even in college towns. As in anything, know your surroundings, and take advantage of the Blue Light System.</p>
<p>I am not sure how to quantitate what “considerable” means in terms of crime, but the crime around the Tulane campus is not remotely comparable to the crime rate in parts of New Orleans where no sane person would ever go. Does that mean ignore the problem? Of course not, as in any campus environment, especially but not limited to urban ones, a student needs to use common sense. Is that an indictment of New Orleans? Again, no. This could be said about any university in a major city. USC, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Temple, Columbia, and Yale for examples, are not in great areas. A couple of blocks in the wrong direction can mean trouble. Wash U in St. Louis, though, is in a nice area, although walking through Forest Park (across the street, just like Audubon from Tulane) at night would be a huge mistake. Yet the St. Louis metro area has terrible crime statistics, and only by knowing these are HEAVILY skewed by the north side and East St. Louis, neither of which are close to Wash U, would one know to discount those statistics. Tulane is in a similar situation.</p>
<p>In other threads last year, some of us gathered crime statistics from Tulane (which is far better at making them public than most schools) and compared them to Vandy, Duke, JHU, U Chicago, USC and some others. In many cases we had to go to the city statistics because the schools are not so forthcoming. Tulane is no worse for violent crime (rapes, muggings, etc.), and in most cases better than these peer institutions. It is almost impossible to compare robbery and petty theft though. But I think it is fair to say it is the violent crime that worries most people.</p>
<p>Also, both freshman AND sophomores are required to live on campus. If the housing gets tight, they MIGHT let a few sophomores live off campus, but this would be such a small number it is hardly worth mentioning. And clearly these would be students that wanted to live off campus, not those that wanted to stay in the dorms.</p>
<p>Perhaps someone more ambitious than I can dig into the Tulane-area crime statistics. My D and her roommate had no difficulty finding off-campus housing their senior year, and they had no “incidents.” Neither did any of their friends who lived off-campus.</p>
<p>Crime statistics come in all sorts of forms. I did find this site that lists 31 registered sex offenders living in zip code 70118 as of May 2009 (same zip code as Tulane).</p>
<p>Well, I am too lazy to go back and regurgitate what I posted last year, but here is the link to the crime reports from the Tulane Safety Office, which are very complete and include crimes within a 1 mile radius (I think that is the distance, but whatever it includes off compus stuff) of the campus:</p>
<p>I just thought I would add some of the minor cons since I have nowhere else to release my frustration:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The drainage sucks. After it starts raining, you are going to be walking through inches-deep puddles within half an hour, no matter where you start or finish. If you do choose Tulane, make sure you have rain boots by mid-September, or you’re ****ed.</p></li>
<li><p>The internet sucks, ethernet and wireless. On the typical day, you might have perfect connection for 30 minutes, then no connection for 2 minutes, then slow connection for 5 minutes, then perfect connection for 2 minutes, then no connection for 5 minutes, then slow connection for 2 minutes, then perfect connection for a while again.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Have to agree with pFNMCp on #1, the campus does have a lot of standing water after a big rain, which occurs with some regularity. Once they finish with the new construction on McAlister, that will help a lot in that section of campus.</p>
<p>I asked my D about the internet connection in Butler, and she says she doesn’t have any problems. So maybe it is worse in Wall? Don’t know.</p>
<p>I’m surprised to see all the arrests for marijuana in the crime statistics. I’m a parent, so I am in no way endorsing drug use, but even back in my day the campus police turned a blind eye to these matters, or at the very least, dealt with them in-house without involving the regular Police.</p>
<p>I cannot speak to this with any great knowledge, but my impression is that Tulane is getting more strict about both drugs and alcohol. I think they have been that way about the former for some time, but only recently started taking stronger measures about excessive alcohol use, open drunkenness on campus, etc. I don’t know if this is an attempt to tamp down Tulane’s reputation as a heavy drinking school or if there is another reason, but it does seem to be the case. Like you Scorpio, I would just as soon not see drug use or excessive drinking at all, but the reality is obviously far different. I know they are trying not to go overboard either, especially with the punishments for drinking. Tough challenge.</p>
<p>It should be noted that they say many times during orientations and move-in meetings that drug use lands you in New Orleans jail, not Tulane jail. So at least they are very very clear about this with both students and parents from the start.</p>