FWIW, whether or not the stats show that they actually are high crime areas, large parts of the City of Binghamton do indeed look the part, to me. They have that decimated look to them, reminiscent of when I visited Detroit . IMO, Virtually anybody driving through these areas, much less walking through them, would immediately think to be careful, you wouldn’t need to tell them. IMO it is not just the typical “town -gown” situation because the “town” part appears to be much rougher than normal.
The Vestal campus is physically removed from these areas. It is located on a long road that is filled with strip malls containing every chain store humanity has devised. Basically.
But students are not completely insulated from Binghamton. They socialize in downtown Binghamton at night. And a lot of students live off campus in Binghamton, in or near some areas that appear to me to be not so safe. There are also some scholastic programs, and a dorm I think, that are located in downtown Binghamton.
Nevertheless, the relatively recent grad in my family liked it there. Though he did have a bike stolen, when he was living off-campus.
If there was a dime for every bike stolen from a college student, lol.
No student is completely isolated from the town their college is in. Nor should they be. My friend’s daughter at Yale has chosen to move off-campus to a somewhat sketchy part of town. It’s affordable. Other students live there too. My friend is not thrilled, but her daughter can’t wait. They are big boys and girls and if they are big enough to move away from home, they are big enough to understand that they must be aware of their personal safety, regardless of where they attend college.
@merc81 -look at the map. The crime rate where the downtown campus is located and where students tend to hang out is about as high as it could be. But that isn’t reason to reject the school. It is a reason to be cautious if you choose to attend. Many students are not cautious cause the place “looks safe”.
re #22, where we maybe disagree is that maybe that block looks “safe”( at night) but by the time the students are going there, they have looked around, and there should be basically nobody who would not feel they had a reason to be cautious.
re #21, I do not disagree that there are some other similar situations. I posted because it just seemed to me that OP was being picked on for pointing out that BU was one of those situations. Or even disbelieved. I don’t think many people who have actually been to Binghamton would disagree about it not feeling safe there.
@monydad I’m surprised to read that you don’t think Binghamton looks safe. I actually think it looks a lot safer than it is. I also think the university has failed to reveal the extent of the gang problem. While some of the difficulties can happen anywhere, some things are more likely with a high gang presence.
For example about a month ago, in response to10 drug related deaths in the month of March alone (NOT involving Binghamton University students as far as I know), the city newspaper ran a story warning the community of fentanyl laced heroin. But earlier this academic year there were at least 2 fatal overdoses within a couple of weeks of each other involving Binghamton University students living off campus -neither thought to be suicides and both likely related to the tainted drugs.{What happens off campus makes the city papers while what happens on campus doesn’t necessarily-and used to not make the papers by design, so I don’t know if there were others). Two deaths so close together were not a coincidence. Yes, that could happen anywhere but drugs are the business of gangs. So the presence of gangs makes that sort of death more common in communities with a strong gang presence.
The dangers of tainted drugs are not distributed evenly across all students. But the kind of assaults common in communities with high violent crime rates are.
And no we are not talking about stolen bikes here. We are talking about serious violent crime.
A year ago 2 other students were killed-one by stabbing and one by strangulation. It turned out that both were murdered by other students. Again, students are not equally at risk for that sort of violence. Yet, students who are at risk often fail to take precautions. The point is, students need to understand their vulnerabilities and to take precautions to stay safe. These things can happen anywhere but they don’t have to happen anywhere. Just be careful!
I don’t know where you were looking. Or when.
When I was going up there, a few times a year for about four years, ending about three years ago, large portions of it looked very sketchy. Nothing you wrote surprises me based on what I perceived.
I’d agree that much of it has the burnt out Detroit look. But if you were just to stay around Washington Ave (near restaurants Number 5 or Whole in the Wall) on the Southside or on court between Water and State (where there are some small cafes and restaurants), I don’t think it looks so bad. And if you just went to bars that line those streets it has an American Graffiti look to it. And the residential areas of the West side don’t look too bad. But the Westside is a hotbed of gang crime; yet it looks pretty so the fact that it is so gang filled my not be apparent.
@lostaccount Every student should be cautious at any college or in any town. Binghamton is not exceptionally crime ridden. You seem to think it is. For some reason, you seem determined to portray the town as being exceptionally dangerous. Unfortunately, other colleges have had murders. Anyone can search for a list. Yale, USC, Rutgers and many other are known for being in high crime areas. Lehigh had a murder on campus. Virginia Tech had a massacre. PSU has had notorious frat deaths, Cornell is notorious for suicides, and on and on. I am wondering why you are determined to paint the city as inherently more dangerous than any other.
Also, @oldmom4896, while the main campus is in Vestal where the crime is low, the university located a school in downtown Binghamton. So classes are now held there. Also unless students like the strip mall franchises like Tuesdays or Olive Garden, they go to restaurants and bars in downtown BInghamton not Vestal. There is really nothing in Vestal.
@merc81 The very darkly colored area is where the university located a school and where the crime is very high. It’s not a matter of playing around with borders and declaring it all save if you can adjust the borders so averages are low. The issue is where students spend time. Are those streets safe or not. They aren’t.
@Lindagaf Because it is. And students, especially those from regions close to NYC, ignore that fact and get hurt. The overall crime rate is not the issue. The fact that the crime is concentrated in a few streets is the issue.
I am not aware of more students ignoring the dangers of the city of Binghamton than students ignoring the dangers of the cities of Los Angeles or Boston. Students can and do ignore their own safety all the time. You seem to think there is a particular problem with Binghamton. You could also alert CC readers on the UCLA or Yale forums to the dangers of those places.
Here is a list of colleges with high numbers of alcohol related incidents: https://collegestats.org/explore/drunk-on-campus/
Everyone knows that deaths due to alcohol are far more likely than being murdered. Some very fine institutions, such as Brown and MIT appear in these lists. Isn’t death by alcohol poisoning at college more likely than being killed by a gang?
It’s fine to make people aware, but it’s not fine to paint the city as incredibly dangerous when it isn’t. It isn’t pristine, it isn’t crime free, it doesn’t have an unlimited supply of campus entertainment, but there are not many colleges that are perfect. The retention rate speaks volumes.
I’m responding to posts. Yes I do think Binghamton is different from those other cities. Binghamton students tend to not view the area realistically and the university historically depicted the city as very safe. Not so for those other cities. But partially this is exaggerated by my replying to posts seemingly countering what I write so I’ll stop replying so this does not continue.
re #29: Cornell suicide rate is at or below average.
re #28: One has to drive through some of those other areas to get to those other places that are “not so bad” looking. by the time you make that drive, you know.
I don’t see proof that all Binghamton students do not view the area realistically. From talking to several Binghamton parents whose kids are happy, it seems that there is plenty of awareness that going to the bars downtown and wandering into bad neighborhoods is something to be done with caution and/or avoided, like MANY other college towns. My friend told me kids have been mugged coming out of bars. Not unique to Binghamton, and not surprising when alcohol is involved. His son graduated last year and my friend highly recommends BU because his son had a great experience there. Another friend told me that going to BU (as an OOS student) was the best decision her son ever made. He’s now a junior living off campus. Clearly not all students are unaware of safety issues.
I don’t know of any university that advertises its high crime rate. Please provide an example.
The claim that Binghamton is one of the MOST dangerous cities in America is not borne out by facts. It’s a small city that clearly has some issues, not dissimilar to other small cities that have issues. I looked up Macballers and found several articles from last year which listed multiple members of that gang who’d been indicted. I don’t know if the gang is still active. Presumably it is. Hopefully my son and his friends will have enough good sense to avoid getting involved with gang members while at BU.
I will say this, unsafe cities for colleges are not that unusual. In our case, we had looked at Clark (Worcester), BU (Binghamton), Seton Hall (South Orange) and all had higher crime areas near campus. They also had safer zones. Awareness and education for the students is of course a key factor. Schools for the most part seem to be one of two types, at least on the East Coast: Near a city and crime, or out entirely in the sticks.