<p>I'm from the Chicagoland area and I want the real answer- is it safe? I know the area is one of the worst in the nation...</p>
<p>If you check America’s Most Dangerous Cities, you will find out Washington, D.C., Philadephia, New Haven, ST. Louis, Baltimore are on the list. NO Chicago.</p>
<p>[The</a> Most Dangerous Cities In America - Business Insider](<a href=“The Most Dangerous Cities in America”>The Most Dangerous Cities in America)</p>
<p>I’m from Chicago. Chicago as a city is safe generally but uchicago is on the far south side. I have heard some people not wanting to go to the south side of campus for safety reasons but I think people generally do feel safe. I’m sure the school has a ton of safety measures for students.</p>
<p>Sorry for the cross-post, but a similar question came up in a different thread, so I will repost my response there here.</p>
<p>There are many proactive steps taken to ensure a safe and comfortable experience for our students in Hyde Park and surrounding areas. Hyde Park is consistently noted among the safest neighborhoods in Chicago. Our campus police force patrols campus and the surrounding area and there are many safety resources, including a Blue Light emergency phone system, busses, and an after-hours shuttle service, that are in place to make sure students feel comfortable traveling in and around the neighborhood.
As a staff member of the University, I live in East Hyde Park (about a 10 minute walk north of the Broadview dorm and 20 min walk from campus proper) and walk to and from my home to work every day, barring rain or snow. I am not the most imposing of persons (read: scrawny nerdy young adult), but I feel very comfortable in this neighborhood; I have not in 6 years of living here been in a situation in which I have felt unsafe. I actually live across the street from a theological seminary dorm where many nuns live, as a picture of the kinds of people who live in my neighborhood 
Of course there are things about living in a city that you’ll want to take in to account-- being aware of your surroundings and alert, making an effort to take shuttle services or walking in groups, but these are things that make as much sense in my smaller, non-urban hometown as much as in Chicago.</p>
<p>I’m pretty cavalier about the surroundings and spend a fair amount of time in the supposed “bad” parts of the area. I’ve gone to open mic nights in Washington Park on Friday nights, where opposing gang members come out for a night of culture that is viewed as sacred – no violence, etc. I work tutoring kids in one of the ‘worst’ neighborhoods and take the bus home from work late at night (10pm) fairly often. I go for runs all around the south side during the day and sometimes later on. I take the green line sometimes. </p>
<p>Am I increasing the risk that something bad will happen to me? Probably. Have I ever felt unsafe? No. A person with a reasonable amount of common sense will never have a problem in virtually any neighborhood. In fact, I’ve actually been treated very warmly. I helped an elderly lady with a walker off the bus the other day, and after I got onto the bus a guy (covered in tattoos, baggy clothes, generally the type that people would stereotype as bad) that had seen me started up a conversation and we talked for 20 minutes about life. He was great. I’ve had a number of great conversations with people on the bus – people are thrilled when I talk to them and ask them how they’re doing. </p>
<p>To actually have a point in this post, since I seem to have diverged and over-indulged my hippy-ish outlook on life, I’ll say that if anyone were to be mugged based on the environments they frequent, it would be me. Since I have never had a problem, people that stick close to campus should definitely not have a problem, as long as they possess a tiny, tiny amount of common sense.</p>
<p>Visit the campus and decide for yourself. Everyone’s comfort level is different.</p>
<p>I will just say as a matter of fact that UChicago3 has been very, very lucky thus far. Quite a few students here think Hyde Park is safe until something happens to them. I come from a very safe suburb so it has been an adjustment for me, but it isn’t too bad. Around campus is generally very safe.</p>
<p>Or I have a modicum of common sense and the ability to deal with people. I take precautions – I dress down, try to travel with a friend when I can, time it right so I don’t have to wait at the bus stop for awhile (once on the bus, nothing will happen. Unless you use your phone), carry a fake wallet on me and rarely bring my phone anywhere… and, more importantly, I talk to people. I say hi, I start up conversations, etc. I reason that I’m less likely to be mugged at a bus stop or on a bus or anywhere if I am making an effort to ask them how they are and not act aloof like every other UChicago student that walks passed them. Plus, once I’m talking to a person from the area, it’s less likely that a third party will interrupt to cause me any problems. </p>
<p>It’s worked for 3 years now. I like to think “luck” does not have too much to do with it.</p>
<p>I get peeved when native Chicagoans (re:Eleanor) paint a large geographic territory with a broad brush as “all the same.” new Yorkers do this about the Bronx (never mind that Riverdale is there, along with some of the city’s most expensive private schools, Fordham, tremendous history and interesting neighborhoods.) People in Philly do this about West and North Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Hyde Park is many things to many people. It has multimillion dollar homes and condos, working class families, and students. The greater south side has wonderful restaurants, great parks, and intersting shopping. When I was a student my complaint about Hyde Park was not safety (as in, Hyde Park is in a city, some amount of crime is inevitable here as anywhere) but rather lack of amenities. That’s somewhere where Hyde Park has REALLY improved, and 53rd street is evolving into a 24-hour commercial district.</p>
<p>Coming from somebody who remembers a time before MAC bought K and G, today’s Hyde Park is a tremendous improvement from the Hyde Park of 2004, and the Hyde Park of 2004 was fine.</p>
<p>Yeah and Objectiveperson should note that UChicago is the only urban school in the country to supposedly engage in such “disdain.” All other urban universities in the country are little pockets of rainbows and harmony.</p>
<p>[UCPD</a> Daily Incident Reports | The University of Chicago](<a href=“http://www.uchicago.edu/php/safety/incidentReports.php]UCPD”>http://www.uchicago.edu/php/safety/incidentReports.php) - I’ve been keeping a close watch on these. The site also has some very useful general safety trends that show how crime has gone down in the past few years (whether it’s too high is up to you).</p>
<p>I should also add that I compared Chicago’s daily reports to those of another highly regarded school in DC that is considered to be in a much better neighborhood. Honestly, there wasn’t much of a difference…</p>
<p>Looking through, most of these involve UNATTENDED property being stolen, which happens in most if not every campus. I saw one from February that was actually quite funny: “Complainant reported that a female subject threw chili on him after a verbal argument.” </p>
<p>This shall be my last post in this thread for now <em>quietly scurries away</em>.</p>
<p>Objectiveperson:</p>
<p>I’m not sure if UChicago is unique in this regard at all. I imagine other urban schools (Yale, Columbia, Penn, Hopkins) often used similar techniques to maximize the distinction between “us” and “them” to the full extent allowed by law. </p>
<p>I’m just curious why UChicago is unique in this regard, and distinct from the other schools I just mentioned. I’ve been lucky to spend considerable time at many of these other schools, and the “town gown” relations often tend to be similar. At some schools, in fact (like Yale), the relations are oftentimes even more stressful, with the school literally erecting gates that represent barriers to entry.</p>
<p>My issue, Objectiveperson, is that UChicago’s approach is hardly unique in broad terms. If I’m not mistaken, in the 1950s, riots erupted in New Haven over tensions between Yale and the surrounding community. The Yale Law Journal (116 Yale L.J. 1302) has also covered restrictive covenants and their use in New Haven.</p>
<p>Overall, though, I’m not overly familiar with this issue. Unless you can point to comparative analysis that indicates UChicago was the paramount transgressor in a time where lots of universities were engaging in lots of ugly actions, there isn’t much to say on the issue. Can you point to such analysis? </p>
<p>Moreover, an issue I have with your analysis is that, absolutely, schools employed ugly tactics and techniques to segregate themselves in the past. This segregation remains very problematic today (see the campuses at Penn, Hopkins, UChicago, Yale, etc.). Schools, however, have generally tried to improve upon the ugliness that existed 50-60 years ago. </p>
<p>If, however, you point to ugly tactics from 60 years back as evidence of tradition, you may lose sight of positive trends since such periods of ugliness. </p>
<p>Again, my key issue is you are singling out one school without demonstrating - through comparative analysis - that this school is the key transgressor. Additionally, when most urban schools 60 years ago employed racist, ugly policies, I’m not sure what explanatory effect the statement “X school was the most racist and ugly of the bunch!” really has now.</p>
<p>I agree that anyone who has this as a concern should check out the areas of their schools personally. YOu can’t really gauge safety by looking at ratings of an entire city or even neighborhood because the immediate area is really what is the usual concern. Also how the college has controlled the area is an issue too. You need to look at crime statistics and where kids are living off campus. That might be the real deal breaker. If you are thinking about living off campus after a couple of years, if the student ghetto area is not one where you want to live, it may not be the school for you. </p>
<p>This whole thing backfired on me. I sent my kid to a university in a nice, safe area with a good margin of safety ring around it. What does he do? He moves off campus, not around the main campus but an ancillary campus in the city where the rent is cheap and where unbeknownst to me, was where a lot of the kids would go live. Dangerous, yes. No real university presence either since it was not the main deal.</p>
<p>Lol - objectiveperson, you noted that my previous post contained a lack of proof when I “imagined” what other schools struggled with in urban relations, and then stated:</p>
<p>“I don’t need a comparative analysis to make this case.”</p>
<p>Again, I get it, you thought UChicago sucked and has an abysmal history of race relations, and it indeed has such a history.</p>
<p>So, where would you have rather gone? What’s the better university for you? Obviously UChicago wasn’t it. Would you have been better off at Penn or Hopkins or where?</p>
<p>I also think I’ve been quite clear about UChicago’s history in terms of urban planning. For most of its history, it’s been awful. Is that defensive? I think that’s pretty clear - it’s been awful. We can agree on that, right?</p>
<p>As such a history and the university’s lack of empathy for the surrounding neighborhood for a good portion of its history was an affront to you, where would you have rather gone? Where would you have felt more at home?</p>
<p>Pardon, I meant an affront generally. You accurately raise an issue that still exists today.</p>
<p>Everything you state are facts (although perhaps dated facts - I haven’t been in touch with HP enough to know what’s going on now). So, why the hell did you go to UChicago? </p>
<p>This to me seems akin to someone who doesn’t want to be with rich northeasterners going to Penn.</p>
<p>“I thought I was getting Kurt Vonnegut and Studs Terkel, but I ended up with Milton Friedman.”</p>
<p>Yep - this is like going to Princeton expecting to get Toni Morrison and ending up with powerpoints about Goldman Sachs. </p>
<p>Appropriate research on universities is important.</p>