<p>Tragedy can happen anywhere anytime. My heart goes out to the parents, friends and family of these young people. I got the same letter shown above by email today. As a parent of a newly committed trojan it has to give one pause. However, if we let the fear we feel after hearing about these events determine where we go, we’d have to avoid a lot of places. Like lower Manhattan? a gated community in Florida? The London buses? The block next to my hospital where there was a carjacking? I think we need to teach our children to be streetsmart (thanks madbean for using that word on another post about this on the film student forum) and to be prudent about where they go and when, and then we launch them into the world to be fully engaged participants in all types of locations.</p>
<p>I just want to throw in my two cents. If you got into USC and you are having second thoughts about going because of this incident, please hear me out.</p>
<p>As a child, I lived in some REALLY BAD areas outside of Chicago.</p>
<p>The area around USC is not “scary” by any means unless you have spent your entire life living in a sheltered suburb. But if you have never lived in a city, then yeah, it’s probably going to be a little bit scary for you at first. The amount of crime around USC is not ridiculous. In fact, this area is incredibly safe. Those shootings are isolated incidents. The most recent involving the two graduate students was incredibly sad; but as I walked home that day, one of my neighbors (a Los Angeles resident, not a student) actually approached me and apologized (“it really sucks that a few people are responsible for this bad image of locals as a whole”). Of course not everyone you meet is going to be nice, but not everyone is going to shoot you!</p>
<p>The incident that occurred earlier this year actually happened next door to me and it was not a complete accident… one of the students was throwing a party next door and had left the door open. You shouldn’t do that in Los Angeles, but it’s not like you would do that anywhere else! Furthermore, the student confronted the thief directly instead of calling DPS or the police. The other student only got injured trying to protect him. I’m not saying it’s their fault or anything, but it could have been prevented by exercising caution. DPS caught the suspect a few days later too, and I’m confident that they’ll catch the one behind the most recent shooting.</p>
<p>Do you really think that crime doesn’t happen on any other campus? UCLA had shootings two years ago. University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (for you non-Midwesterners, that’s in the middle of nowhere surrounded by cornfields) had a similar shooting at a party in November. It’s a college campus and there are parties that get out of control and students who do bad things, just like on any other college campus. </p>
<p>Please don’t let all the talk of crime make you think that USC is some kind of horrible place! At least visit before you make any judgments about the quality/safety of the campus.</p>
<p>Such an awful thing to happen. I’m an alumni of the EE department and know how hard it must be for everyone and the other Chinese graduate students.</p>
<p>dreamupsided0wn is spot on. That neighborhood isn’t great, but it’s not the place where you’d expect something like this. </p>
<p>There are much, much, much worse neighborhoods in Los Angeles. I’m sure all of the community living on that street, which includes many non-USC-affiliated families, is just as shocked and surprised this happened outside their homes.</p>
<p>Walk around on [Google</a> street view](<a href=“http://g.co/maps/wz4td]Google”>http://g.co/maps/wz4td) on that street. In the daytime it seems like a nice place. </p>
<p>The cars and houses are fairly maintained, some newer model cars and trucks, a couple Mercedes and BMW’s parked on the street. Lots of nice trimmed lawns and gardens.</p>
<p>Most of the houses don’t even have bars on the windows or anything like that.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, tragedies can occur, even if the statistics say it’s unlikely.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for taking the time to comment. My daughter decided to come visit and so we flew in last night and will be at the Preview Day today. She is excited to tour the campus and find out more about the EE program.</p>
<p>Ilovemy2girls–you got here just in time for some of USC’s legendary weather. Last week was a little rainy/cold. Today–paradise. Hope you and she enjoy.</p>
<p>My son and I just returned from USC about thirty minutes ago and had a long and difficult conversation about the campus and the surrounding area. While the USC President characterizes the institution as being in a “dynamic urban area”, there are certainly other ways to view it beyond the spin. We drove around campus and its environs for over an hour, up until about 9:30 p.m. The homes and businesses just moments away from the pretty campus all have bars on the windows and security gates. We could see quite a lot of street people roaming around. Anyone who tries to sugar-coat USC as being anywhere but in economically depressed South Central LA is simply delusional. If you elect SC, turn off the fight song just long enough to be realistic about what one of the liabilities is.</p>
<p>Being around poor people is a liability? I guess that’s one way of looking at it.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you and your child have decided that USC is not the school for your child. Our children were safe and happy attending USC. True, they did not venture out away from campus high or drunk. Like any urban area, they are aware of their surroundings, much as they are in Waikiki or Honolulu, NYC or Boston, or any large urban area. They have never had any problems.</p>
<p>Hope your child finds a school that you and your child will feel will meet his/her needs. That’s about all any of us really wants for our kids.</p>
<p>fwiw: “South Central” Los Angeles is East of the 110 fwy, South of East Washington, West of Central and No of Vernon. USC is in University Park - the community next door and just south of downtown. The surrounding neighbors and local businesses are very proud and protective of the school. </p>
<p>YES, it is a poorer section of Los Angeles and you would never find me (or my d) walking around at night in some of the adjacent neighborhoods. Why would she? She is there to attend smaller classes, study and work directly with acclaimed professors, make new life-long friends/contacts and enjoy her college experience. She has not had one regret. She has never felt threatened or afraid. She is aware of her surroundings, takes campus transportation to LA Live area and bikes around during the day. She spends most of her hours, by necessity, in the university “bubble.” There is plenty of housing just next to school.</p>
<p>Every family must make their decision based on so many variables, and worry about safety is certainly valid and important. However, I do respectfully disagree about being “delusional” or swayed by a fight song when deciding that USC was a safe and intelligent choice made by our family/d.</p>
<p>Wow another incident occured (robbery/shooting) last night on the row near USC… This is starting to **** me off…</p>
<p>Another one? Four shootings in a week? Ouch! Condolences to the families.</p>
<p>DPS shot a robber in the leg last night on 28th.</p>
<p>Campus security shooting a robber in the leg would make it a second shooting incident–the first being the tragic shooting of the two graduate students, not a fourth incident.</p>
<p>Just saw that.</p>
<p>This time, it was the robber who was shot: [Officers</a> involved in shooting near 30th and Figueroa streets|Daily Trojan](<a href=“http://dailytrojan.com/2012/04/18/officers-involved-in-shooting-near-30th-and-figueroa-streets/]Officers”>http://dailytrojan.com/2012/04/18/officers-involved-in-shooting-near-30th-and-figueroa-streets/)</p>
<p>This crime occurred within USC’s patrol area, and the suspect was almost immediately caught (and shot by DPS officers). Pretty stupid to pull a stunt like that within USC’s patrol area, particularly given last week’s tragedy.</p>
<p>But criminals aren’t known for acting rationally. </p>
<p>I work right next to Century City mall, a place where Bentleys, Maseratis, etc. are a common sight at the valet. The mall is crawling with security, and is located in one of the nicest areas of LA. You’d think no one would be dumb enough to try anything, yet we’ve had 2 armed robberies here in the past couple of years.</p>
<p>Obviously, by my location tag you can tell I go to UCLA. I’m not going to bring up anything negative between the two universities since that is extremely low to use a tragedy as rivalry ammo. Anyway, I know USC’s history pretty well, and back when USC was formed in the 1880s, it was in the best part of town (I guess Los Angeles could be called a town at least back then, but not even close to what it is in size today). Obviously, the innermost part of the city where USC resides now is one of the oldest parts of Los Angeles, and UCLA is in a decently new and clean area compared to the inner city. My question was, taking the decay and aging of cities into account, how many decades do you guys think it will take for UCLA/Westwood to age socioeconomically to something similar to USC’s surroundings? These are just opinions and no one is right or wrong.</p>
<p>This is true, the area just north of USC was once the wealthiest neighborhood in Los Angeles. Many of the mansions from the early 1900s remain; some of them are now student housing. Edward L. Doheny (the oil tycoon who donated USC’s main library and inspired Daniel Day-Lewis’s character in There Will Be Blood) lived in a mansion that still stands on the Mt. St. Mary’s campus on Adams, a mile from USC.</p>
<p>When Los Angeles’s early elites moved to Beverly Hills, the area was mostly orange groves. There are no orange groves left in L.A. to bulldoze. UCLA is sort of tucked in near Beverly Hills and Bel Air and I don’t see all those people packing up and leaving any time soon. There’s no immutable rule that nice areas will inevitably decay–and it’s not like Westwood is particularly new, or even, let’s be honest, ‘clean.’ I think the more important lesson is that cities are always changing and the USC area hasn’t always been, and won’t always be, a bad neighborhood. Downtown is going through a period of revitalization that is spreading south and USC’s plans north of campus will have a dramatic effect on the area.</p>
<p>P.S. the robber shot near USC last night was from Compton, 12 miles from campus. USC is closer to Beverly Hills than Compton.</p>
<p>The comments in jjalfonso’s link are quite interesting. </p>
<p>My daughter has committed to USC, I wonder what we are getting ourselves into here. This from a person who spent over a decade living in a house with bars over the windows, we didn’t think anything of it then, just a fact of life, but it’s been a long long time since I’ve lived with that mindset - and my kids never have.</p>
<p>I lived in not-so-nice areas when I was a kid, but moved to nicer areas as I grew up. I love USC and its surrounding area! It’s so easy to get to Hollywood, Downtown, Culver City, and Santa Monica via public transit (especially with the new Expo Line opening in ten days!). I spent most of my life in and around Chicago, though, so I prefer an urban sitting. Although USC is technically “downtown,” it’s in a more suburban area than, say, FIDM.</p>
<p>If you like culture, diversity, and a great view of a thriving metropolis, then you will like USC. </p>
<p>But some people don’t like those things. ;)</p>
<p>^ I am a huge fan of Chicago dreamupside down. I have to say though, that “suburban” never crossed my mind as an adjective to describe USC.</p>
<p>Our kids have been at USC from 2006-2012. It has worked out well for them & for us. I would suggest that many, many other urban & other schools have problems as well, including suicides, murders, crime, pedophiles, and other issues. If you focus on and look for negatives, they are out there for many, many campuses. There are many, many positives that for most of us greatly outweigh the negatives.</p>