<p>I haven't been on here since I applied to college 4 years ago but a security alert email I just received finally moved me to post here. I am a University of Chicago fourth year living in an apartment about a block from campus. Campus safety has never been a huge concern for me but this year the crime seems to be worse than it ever has been - not necessarily in terms of stats but in terms of the emails I get being closer and closer to places and times that I walk around regularly. There have been muggings at gunpoint at 11:35 a.m., 9:10 p.m., 7:50 p.m. - in other words, regular times when lots of people are walking around (not the middle of the night when you know you shouldn't be out alone). These things are happening right on campus - "On a main quadrangle sidewalk near Cobb Hall" where a majority of classes are for all students; "On the Midway Plaisance near Harper Library" where everyone from the 2 south dorms walks multiple times a day to get to campus; "on Kimbark Avenue between 55th Street and 56th Street" where loads of people live and shop - I could go on. The crimes that moved me to post happened a few hours ago, I just received this email: </p>
<p>"At approximately 11:35 p.m., Sunday, October 9 two University students walking at East 57th Street and South Dorchester were approached by a male armed with a handgun. The suspect took the victims cell phones and fled north on Dorchester. The victims were not injured.</p>
<p>"At approximately 12:05 a.m., Monday, October 10 a University student sitting in the Main Quadrangle was approached by three males, one of whom was armed with a handgun. The suspects took the victims cell phone and book bag before fleeing west to South Ellis. The victim was not injured."</p>
<p>Thank goodness they were not injured but this is still horrifying - I know that if I lost my cellphone and backpack (with laptop, wallet, and all of my school stuff) I would be devastated, and this is becoming a common occurrence even on the Quad. Besides, much worse things can and have happened than muggings. I am lucky enough that I have never had a problem in my 3 years here but at this point I feel afraid to go out at night and am constantly thinking about my safety. I have multiple friends who have been robbed or had to run home because they were being followed.</p>
<p>I am up late and should be finishing my work right now but I wanted to say all this because 1) prospective students should have an unbiased viewpoint, understanding that it is just one person's viewpoint and many other students will feel differently, and 2) I hope to put some pressure on the university to make changes (rather than merely reminding students to simply "Be alert and aware of your surroundings at all times" and other statements that shift the blame to students and not the school) and this is the best way I could think of. I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to vent my frustration!</p>
<p>Eh, I think you’re making too big of a deal out of it. These off-the-wall things happen a lot in early October when students first come back to campus. Last year, it happened as well in the same time period: people getting robbed outside of Cobb and someone having their collarbone broken outside of Harper.</p>
<p>Yet as the year progresses, crime drops off significantly. Last winter and spring, for instance, there were hardly any security alerts at all, and zero significant incidents. I’m sure the trend will continue this year.</p>
<p>Also, I’m not sure why you say that crime has been worse off than it has been… statistically, Hyde Park has never been safer, and it is significantly safer than it was a few years ago. </p>
<p>The last thing to remember is that these things happen with the same frequency at other schools, not only in urban areas, but in suburban areas as well. When I was a high school student living on the Ball State campus in suburban Indiana, we had similar incidents occur with the same frequency. UChicago students just tend to exaggerate since 1) they’re usually from upper class neighborhoods that rarely experience crime at all, and 2) Hyde Park is predominantly black, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere for upper-class white kids.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response! However it doesn’t make me feel any better. Calling crimes “off-the-wall” is sort of marginalizing - we’re talking about people being shot and raped as well as being robbed - and saying that lots of crimes happen when all the students return is exactly what I’m worried about…I’d forgotten about the incidents last year but they are equally upsetting.</p>
<p>As for crime dropping off in winter, 1) I have a few emails from November last year (including the robbery on the Midway I mentioned above) as well as an email about a series of fatal shootings in February, and 2) even if it is statistically safer (something that I mentioned in my original post as being less important to me than specific events occurring closer to campus and at more troubling times of day) in the winter, it’s not like we can enjoy the lack of crime in the winter…it’s too cold to go outside very much anyway, which also probably contributes to the decreased crime.</p>
<p>As for your ad hominem argument, I don’t know how you can write off the many crimes I’ve listed (and even more I haven’t) on me being an “upper-class white kid” (which I am not). I did not exaggerate anything. I did mention my feeling of being unsafe, and added that other students may not feel the same way - that does not change the fact that UChicago is unsafe, maybe not more unsafe than Ball State (which is irrelevant), but still unsafe.</p>
<p>Let me make more of a familiar example. Lately, Northwestern has been experiencing quite a bit of crime… unusually violent crime, too, and worse than what we’ve been getting at UChicago lately. Yet why does no one talk about it?</p>
<p>Well, the answer is simple: Evanston is not perceived to be a dangerous place. It’s suburban and predominantly white, so whenever you get an incident like that, it’s simply considered an anomaly. No one worries about it enough to even say anything about it. Yet whenever some kind of incident happens in Hyde Park, suddenly it’s the talk of the student body. Why? Simply because it can’t be an anomaly, as Hyde Park is perceived to be dangerous, as a predominantly black neighborhood. Instead, these infrequent crimes are considered events representing the perceived danger of the neighborhood, even if such crimes happen with equal frequency at NU and UC.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to belittle your feelings, and my argument wasn’t intended to be ad hominem. I was just trying to express what I see as the reality of the situation. But once again, statistically, Hyde Park is very safe, and I think the above paragraph is a good summary of the mentality behind student feelings toward Hyde Park’s safety.</p>
<p>I would add to phuriku’s excellent posts that the two incidents in the security alert are about 99% likely to involve the same perpetrator. It’s not some generalized crime wave; it’s one guy and some friends who did a swing through the area. If he does it more, there’s a high probability he will be caught.</p>
<p>The university runs a huge private police force and spends beaucoup dollars on security of all sorts. That doesn’t eliminate street crime like this, but it does deter it, and it does a decent job of catching the offenders who don’t get deterred. You really can’t ask it to do more. Telling students to be alert, etc., isn’t putting all the responsibility on them; it’s just common sense.</p>
<p>phiruku’s post is exactly right about perceptions. </p>
<p>I’ve posted this before, but I have two family members who were held up at gunpoint on college campuses–one at UCLA and one at Harvard. The UCLA incident happened in the middle of the afternoon. But no one talks about these campuses as being particularly dangerous. </p>
<p>I’m a faculty member at a state flagship in a college town that no one would consider dangerous. Violent crime regularly occurs here, too. However, they don’t send out email about each incident. And students are much more likely to die as a result of alchohol-related stupidity and car accidents (several every year) than as a result of crime.</p>
<p>“Evanston is not perceived to be a dangerous place. It’s suburban and predominantly white, so whenever you get an incident like that, it’s simply considered an anomaly”</p>
<p>Evanston is not predominantly white. Evanston Township High School (the only school in Evanston) is 32% Black/AA, 17% Hispanic/Latino, and 43% white. Low income enrollment is 41%. It has a reputation of being a rich, white suburb, but it is not.</p>
[quote]
The 2000 census showed that Evanston is ethnically mixed with the following breakdown in population: 62.56% white, 22.50% black or African American, 6.09% Asian, and 2.85% from other races. 6.11% were Hispanic or Latino of any race. . . . </p>
<p>According to a 2007 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $69,303, and the median income for a family was $102,258. . . . About 5.1% of families and 11.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.3% of those under age 18 and 7.1% of those age 65 or over.<a href=“from%20Wikipedia”>/quote</a></p>
<p>That qualifies as a rich, white suburb, although certainly not the whitest or the richest. The disparity between the overall figures and Evanston Township High School’s data suggests to me (and probably to anyone who is familiar with this sort of economically diverse suburb) that a fairly high percentage of resident teens attend private or church schools, and that this group is whiter and richer than the public school cohort.</p>
<p>Hyde Park, by the way, in 2000, was 44% white, 38% Black, 11% Asian, and 5% Hispanic, with median household income about $25,000 less than Evanston. That makes it one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Chicago, but meaningfully less affluent than Evanston.</p>
<p>For comparison here is a ranking of the top schools in terms of crime. The federal government regularly collects crime statistics on campuses (although off-campus incidents near the college tend to go under-reported). What’s up with arson at UC Riverside?</p>
<p>That ranking is very surprising. Based on the numbers (as well as the rank), UChicago is safer than Columbia, Harvard, Penn, MIT, Yale, Brown, and even Stanford! But I want to move away from the numbers and just speak of my personal experiences.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that I feel very safe on-campus. I often head back to Pierce from the Core tutors at Harper at 11:00 (sometimes 1:00 in the morning if I decide to do more readings there). Even though I usually walk alone, I have never felt unsafe on the Quad or any part of Hyde Park. Just keep an eye on your surroundings and don’t take out your fancy iPhone (everyone at the South Side should worry about ‘Apple-picking’) and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>The campus community is aware that, because we live in an urban environment, there will be various crime risks. That’s a given. But I’ve been living in Hyde Park (both on campus and off) for a year now, and have found that as long as I use the University provided shuttles at night, and keep my wits about me (walking in a group, not going down dark alleys in the middle of the night, not using my IPhone on the bus), I’m completely fine.</p>
<p>Yes, there have been some muggings at NU - I know of 2 (one right outside my son’s dorm, which is in a well-lit and heavily trafficked area, so rather surprising). As affluent as parts of Evanston are, go just a few blocks west of the campus and you begin to get into some sketchy areas. But no matter. It’s silly to try to try to characterize Evanston as being uniformly safer than Hyde Park or vice versa; any place that is in or near an urban area, is accessible via public transportation, and that attracts a lot of young people is going to have some crime, and at one point, you just have to learn how to act smartly and be aware of your surroundings and not let your fears get the best of you.</p>
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