Alright, so I commute and work full time during the day meaning I end up taking classes really late into the night. I often stay in the libraries until 12 am. I generally go out and get fast food after studying, sometimes a few blocks off of campus because food courts on campus are invariably closed by then. The below is about what goes on at night.
I started attending USC after they made the security changes, so I never had another point of comparison. When people, mostly online, talk about safety concerns around USC I honestly have no idea what they’re referring to, I feel like I must be oblivious. The school is huge. There are 40,000 kids that attend this school and need to navigate the area to go home or get food. It’s not like some prison camp where the kids are all huddled up in their dorms, the only people walking around the town at night are students anyway.
Night life isn’t exactly a thing that USC is short of, and most of the parties have to be held off-campus, so kids are stumbling around into the AM. Just don’t go places where there isn’t a reason to go - gentrification follows the places where students do have a reason to go. E.g. why would anyone walk south? The 160 acre Exposition Park separates USC from the rest of South LA, you’d really have to try to get into trouble down there.
On the other hand, in the direction towards the north and north east are almost all student residential buildings. The frat row several blocks north of campus connects to a neighboring university campus, which then bridges the school halfway to the Staples center, at which marks the edge of DTLA. Given its proximity to downtown, there’s lots of car traffic along the main roads even at 2-3 AM, so unless you go off exploring some alleyways late a night…
I don’t think it’s a joke to say that the security presence has turned up the heat on the area, and it would be insanely hard to get away with a violent crime around here. There are so many easier places to do that kind of stuff. And to even mention gang activity at this point is just fear mongering. I think a lot of people don’t really understand gang culture, other than what’s convenient to movie plotlines. There are less gang ‘members’ in all of LA than there are students at USC. There are half as many homocides in LA as there had been just 10 years ago.
I discussed this topic with a professor, and he observed that a lot of the kids that get into trouble are international students looking for a good deal on housing, compromising too much on everything else for price. Compounded by lack of awareness and poor communication, they get taken advantage of the most, and you’ll note that unfortunately most of the victims we hear about are international students.