"@JBStillFlying : If one student beat another up without provocation, the fact that they knew one another wouldn’t mean that there wasn’t a danger he or she might do it again, to other students, known or unknown. "
Perhaps - it all depends. Without provocation, sure. But violent acts committed between acqaintances have less likelihood of falling into that category, and the particular circumstances may point to that detail and so warrant a decision not to alert. UCPD has discretion just like our local community police do (two people found shot dead in house but neighborhood told there is no threat usually points to a finding of murder-suicide between friends or family members, for instance). They also know that numerous alerts make each one less meaningful in terms of attention. Not saying UCPD aren’t political or agenda driven but obviously there are additional reasons for exercising discretion. And btw, no one said it’s “silly” to call a particular type of crime a public safety issue. It may well have been. A lot depends on the details of the report, which neither I, nor you, would know in full. Obviously if the victim can identify the attacker and that person is brought in for questioning or arrested, that has different implications for the safety of the community than a situation involving a seemingly random attack made by an unknown assailant, be that person a student, faculty, university employee, or “outsider”.
@DunBoyer@JHS@JBStillFlying
Wow!!! Thank you so much for your informative, extensive, and detailed posts!
The information has been extremely helpful for both, my daughter and I. She feels way more comfortable now, and I will be able to sleep at night. @DunBoyer It is great to have your opinion as a current student, and @JHS as a parent (I never miss your posts!) Ah! We live in a small city with around 80.000 habitants, but it’s honestly like Disney, even though the median income is not extremely high.
Thank you again for your time!
@Cariño - The campus itself is pretty safe as far as colleges campuses go; it is the surrounding area that is problematic. The standard advice would be not to go west of Cottage Grove, south of 61st, or north of 55th. Others on this board will disagree with me (looking at you @JHS), but IMHO that is good advice for a first quarter student as that envelope encompasses the campus and the least crime ridden parts of HP. As she gets used to the area and hopefully develops some street smarts, that envelope will expand.
[url=<a href=“https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7995362,-87.5877701,3a,75y,285.4h,97.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDNA2Z8o-Vwz1CoXZwU1EpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656%5DBehold!%5B/url”>https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7995362,-87.5877701,3a,75y,285.4h,97.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDNA2Z8o-Vwz1CoXZwU1EpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656]Behold![/url] The horrifying crime filled urban hellscape that is Hyde Park north of 55th St!
I get scared when I see Rajun Cajun’s samosa pricing too but I don’t think you need a self-defense course and to be a certified Urban Explorer to venture up there.
In all seriousness, 53rd St. is the Harvard Square of Hyde Park - it’s where the people and the shops are. So it gets a marginally higher total amount of crime, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it any more than those hordes of tourists avoid Harvard Square.
You want actual borders? 47th St to ~63rd and Cottage Grove to the Lake is where I think even someone with no street smarts to speak off could wander around and be completely safe. Kenwood is rich people living in mansions. Hyde Park is Hyde Park, you have blue lights every block. And the north half of Woodlawn is practically half students, too.
I just walked around E. Hyde Park Blvd (51st Street) last week. I was strolling in the northwestern quadrant of Hyde Park. In the 1980’s I wouldn’t want to go near there even in day time. Now there are townhouse asking for between $400,000 to $700,000. And Obama’s Chicago residence is right on Greenwood and E. HP Blvd. So I have to say it again and again: Hyde Park has changed a lot since my days and it is much better now.
I always have faith in the old saying: follow the money. Hyde Park real estate price is going UP, not down. People are voting with their pocketbook on the safety of Hyde Park. That is the best proof on how safe Hyde Park is these days.
I have some cousins who are straddling 40 now. They both went to UChicago from a small, isolated college town in the upper Midwest in the mid-90s. It was different then – the crack epidemic and all – but they (one more than the other) really had a hard time because they felt boxed in and unable to go anywhere. They were afraid to step out of @Zinhead 's boundaries, afraid to take the CTA to other parts of Chicago, constantly afraid that someone was going to hurt them. So they were miserable a lot of the time. It was a crappy way to go to college.
Don’t do that. Don’t do it to yourself. Sure, the crime rate is above zero, and it’s marginally farther above zero on 53rd Street than on 55th, but that just doesn’t matter. “Crime” sounds scary, and of course it is, but the vast, vast majority of students are never crime victims, and the vast, vast majority of students who ARE crime victims don’t have anything bad happen to them beyond losing a few dollars or having to replace cards.
My son got jumped and punched a few times by three teenagers within Zinhead’s box. It was scary, he was upset, he had a bruise, it took him a few weeks to get comfortable again. He lost his iPod. That was a super-serious crime. If UChicago students are victims of crimes more serious than that, it makes the newspapers. But a month later it was simply no big deal. No one else either of my kids knew had something that bad happen to them. It wasn’t the worst thing that happened to my son in college, either – he had a serious fencing injury that sent him to the hospital and caused some permanent damage. (By contrast, I had two college friends who were the victims of far more serious crimes. One was killed at her parents’ house by her ex-boyfriend, an alumnus of our college; the other was tortured, raped, and left for dead while camping with a friend in the Smokey Mountains, leaving her with some permanent disabilities.)
The real dangers to students mainly come from other students, not street crime. That shouldn’t stop anyone from going to college, either, or from having fun (responsibly) while there.
“Don’t do that. Don’t do it to yourself.” That’s hitting the nail on the head, @JHS. After all the risk analysis is done, all precautions duly taken, all comparisons between eras taken into account, if you feel yourself retreating in that way from living fully, then you want to seek out another place and school.
Coming to terms with the neighborhood and city isn’t, I would argue, just a matter of conquering one’s fear of being mugged, important as it is to do that. That’s just one part of one’s response to the whole gestalt that constitutes the University of Chicago and the world around it. What I myself most had to confront and deal with as a young student from a small town in the hinterlands was not a fear of violence but the brooding and omnipresent sense of that enormous tract of poverty and hopelessness surrounding me. To feel so privileged in the midst of such misery was an uncomfortable thing and a thing that had to be thought about, grappled with, become depressed about. Any ordinarily sentient young person is bound to have such feelings. That sort of response to a place like the south side of Chicago can’t be simply wished away by exhortations from people like me to live bravely. It seeps into you. I would argue that that’s not a bad thing. It would be bad to simply turn one’s head away from it and live as if it didn’t exist, as if it meant nothing whatever in one’s personal life, rather than being a thing to confront, experience and think about. Such experience, mingled with one’s studies, doesn’t make for a continuously exuberant and carefree student existence. Experience generally doesn’t make for this, nor does study. It is, however, how we learn or try to learn about the world and how to live an honorable life in it. That’s the nature and goal of an education at the University of Chicago.
It’s always seems interesting to me that someone who has been accepted or is planning on attending a college suddenly starts looking at how safe the college is. Might want to look at that before you apply if you’re not comfortable in a big city. It’s part of the selection process and it can really diminish your college experience as @JHS noted.
@CU123 : Don’t worry, for the next few months there will probably be 2-3 threads a day started by high school seniors trying to decide whether to apply and wondering about how safe/unsafe Chicago really is.
This thread was started by a parent who had already come to terms with the general safety of Hyde Park, but was wondering whether she should be concerned about her daughter getting on a bus or the El. I think it’s OK to wait until you are ready to move in to drill down on things like whether you should take a bus or Uber to go downtown. The thread sort of expanded, though, to encompass wider topics like “Is getting mugged a valuable personal growth experience?”, “Is it only safe to walk east-west in Hyde Park, not north-south?” and “Is it safe to ride the CTA only if you get on and off someplace else?”. At which point, predictably, chills were going up and down the parental spine.
They report 15 violent crimes and 58 property crimes for the time period. The violent crime rate in HP ranks 38th out of 77 Chicago neighborhoods and 0.6 violent crimes per 1,000 people in Hyde Park in the past 30 day seem about normal for HP. This website can be checked in a week or two to see if there was an increase in assaults and muggings.
Could be mistaken but recall it being about 38th out of 77th a several weeks ago as well and then a few months before that. So at least through the fall not any change to speak of.
Five muggings (with guns!) in three days feels like a lot. The two muggings yesterday definitely seem like the work of a single perpetrator. I think when there is a rash of muggings it’s often that – a one-person crime spree. I might think they were all the work of the same people, except on Monday the folks who were doing the multiple-person robberies seem to have gotten caught.
The estimates of the times the Midway is busy are off here - it’s more like 8:30 am to 1:00 am, not 9:00 pm (there are no undergrad libraries south of the Midway).
I really doubt there are significant differences in likelihood to be mugged from Cottage to 61st to 47th to the Lake, though I would the areas west of Ellis at night if I was alone and female. Students certainly treat it all as equivalent.
DD is walking home from Logan Center to BJ area most nights at 10 p.m. She says there’s enough foot traffic that she feels safe, and there’s a security guard. But she’s only been there 7 weeks.
Lea111 - That particular path would be very safe. As a side note, it’s one of my favorite stretches of road on campus. Something about the Midway on one side and the variety of UChicago buildings (including the law school) on the other. Hope your daughter stays safe and thrives.
