Trinity Campus Safety

<p>According to many websites, Trinity is not the safest of campuses. According to one wesbite, in one year there were 52 burglaries, 3 assaults, and 9 sexual assaults on campus.
Has this improved at all and is this true for all students?</p>

<p>[Campus</a> Safety](<a href=“http://www.trincoll.edu/cs/Pages/default.aspx]Campus”>http://www.trincoll.edu/cs/Pages/default.aspx)</p>

<p>There’s a link to the 2011 annual report on safety, and weekly reports, as well. You should be able to find similar data at every school’s website.</p>

<p>Wow!! Those are pretty scary numbers for a small school like Trinity</p>

<p>How does Trinity compare with other city schools like Yale, Barnard, U. Penn, etc.? 9 sexual assaults is concerning for such a small student body.</p>

<p>The 9 sexual assaults occured in 2008. The numbers for 2009 and 2010 were 6 and 6. </p>

<p>By point of comparison Bard College, in a semi-rural part of the Hudson Valley, had no forced sexual assaults in 2008, but reported 5 each in 2009 and 2010. Union College, located adjacent to a sketchy neighborhood in Schenectady, NY reported 1 forcible sexual assault in 2008, 0 in 2009 and 1 in 2010. </p>

<p>I think the 2008 stats were cause for concern and based on the downward trend in on-campus crime in general (at least through 2010), Trinity’s administration responded in an effective way. Then again, we haven’t yet seen the stats for 2011 and 2012. Trinity is an urban college, which requires taking a proactive approach to personal safety to a much greater degree than is necessary in the suburbs or at rural colleges. Those who don’t take common sense safety precautions are at most risk of falling prey to the criminally-inclined.</p>

<p>As a parent who had been urging his sons to apply to Trinity, the following article describing a vicious attack of a Trinity sophomore gives me pause:</p>

<p>[Hartford</a> mayor faults handling of Trinity assault - Courant.com](<a href=“http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/ct--campus-assault-20120704,0,7243553.story]Hartford”>http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/ct--campus-assault-20120704,0,7243553.story)</p>

<p>My elder son is now a sophomore at Wesleyan but we visited Trinity on a Saturday evening just after dinner back in April 2010. I had grown up in Connecticut and back in the late 60’s had visited Trinity while I was in high school. When I returned with my son two years ago, I was stunned at the surrounding neighborhood. Very scary, and it was clear that the immediate area facing the north side of the campus was not the safest. The above-listed report is evidence that safety is still an unresolved issue for Trinity.</p>

<p>It blows my mind that after one visit to the campus, you feel that you are in the position to advise prospective candidates whether or not to even consider Trinity. If you read the article you attached, you will notice that the police are investigating Trinity students for the recent attack, not Hartford residents. As a Trinity parent and alum, I can attest to the fact that Trinity is a wonderful school with many strengths. High school students should be advised to visit Trinity and judge for themselves. Don’t listen to uninformed people who have no relationship or experience with the school. Trinity has transformed many lives.</p>

<p>First of all, I was not advising students to apply or not to apply to Trinity. There is no question that Trinity has been and continues to be a top-rated school. And I do agree that Trinity offers a fine liberal arts education. The faculty are excellent, and one of my favorite professors from Wesleyan moved over to Trinity a few years after I graduated and he just recently retired from Trinity. </p>

<p>Actually, as I stated very clearly in my post, I am a Connecticut native, have visited Trinity many times throughout my life, since the age of 11 when I would take Greyhound buses up to the campus and walk around to see what “college was like”. My brothers and sisters all live in the Hartford area still, and they agree with my assessment of the safety of the neighborhood which <strong>DIRECTLY</strong> borders the Trinity campus. I do think that parents and students considering Trinity are well advised to check out Hartford Courant articles online about Trinity’s safety issues and to visit it on a Friday or Saturday evening. While Hartford’s mayor, for political reasons, may allege Trinity students beat up this kid and broke his jaw and face, that is certainly not Trinity’s perspective.</p>

<p>I bet you would not park your car off campus on a Saturday night there. This is NOT the case with other top universities and colleges in Connecticut, such as Yale, Wesleyan, Connecticut College. While safety issues will most likely NOT be determinative in a final decision to attend Trinity, one must go into this with eyes wide open and not gloss over this very serious pattern of personal safety issues that is not yet resolved. I do hope that Trinity resolves these matters quickly–meanwhile, awareness of the issue harms no one.</p>

<p>In the interest of bringing further light to this discussion, those concerned with safety and crime can also refer to the college’s daily and weekly incident reports:</p>

<p>[Daily</a> Crime Log](<a href=“http://www.trincoll.edu/cs/weekly/Pages/default.aspx]Daily”>http://www.trincoll.edu/cs/weekly/Pages/default.aspx)</p>

<p>Morgan - link did not work for me… but I get your point.
As a mom of prospective student, what I am gathering is students are probably safe on campus (of course use caution, as is true at all/most campuses), but that we should assume their college life will be ON campus, as location is not in “college town”. I think this takes away from their college experience.</p>

<p>We visited recently and I think the college is trying to keep kids safe. There were security people riding bikes, in cars, etc. but it does not feel like a very safe area at all and the campus is quite accessible from the city streets. For kids that will be happy “hanging out” on campus with their friends Trinity has alot to offer and a beautiful campus to “hang out” in and on… for others that like to get off the campus and away from the close knit community there should be very serious conversations about personal safety if the kids are not street smart.</p>

<p>momof3 - thank you for sharing your view from your visit. So am I correct in my feeling that the students’ college experience is basically all “on campus” as compared to other schools where the students enjoy the surrounding area restaurants, shops, movies, etc.? Is it fair to assume that Trinity students don’t really leave campus (obviously they will get to stores for their pharmacy needs,etc.), but I’m talking leaving campus for anything social? And if it is true that they never (or VERY rarely) leave campus - do they feel like they are missing out, or is campus life enough? Thanks. </p>

<p>Sorry if I am a little repetitous, I find minimal information on this as compared to CC’s other schools where many students/parents share a lot of info.</p>

<p>Since we only did a visit it’s difficult for me to answer your questions. My son who is normally very chatty with tour guides about the same questions as you are asking really didn’t ask many questions as he had already decided it wasn’t the college for him. Do ask the tour guide what they do for fun, if they leave campus and when they do where they go. Ask them where the stores are that they get their prescriptions filled, buy sundries etc. Perhaps a current student will pick up on this thread and answer your questions also.</p>

<p>Trinity just published a list of new security measures they are taking, including the hiring of a new head of campus security. They are serious about actively improving security.</p>

<p>My son happily returned to campus yesterday as a Sophomore. He and his friends/gf leave campus often - by car. They eat and shop in the area immediately surrounding the campus and have not encountered problems. They also go to neighboring towns/suburbs < 10 minutes away for entertainment, shopping, eating out - but again, it is by car, not by bus or on foot. </p>

<p>My guy loves it there, and actually selected this campus over two other more rural NESCAC campus options in part, to experience the urban vibe. Each student is different - there’s a college out there for everyone. If security - or ANY OTHER factor concerns a student & his/her parents, or otherwise doesn’t fit their list of needs or wants… move on to the next option on the list.</p>

<p>Thanks for adding that. It is a fine college but one that might warrant a visit to ensure that the kiddo is happy with the total environment. And after three kids I know as Mary says there are many colleges of this size and caliber in the country if the location is a concern.</p>

<p>To put it in perspective, below is a recent list of the Nation’s 25 most crime-rattled large(> 6,000 students) private & public universities. </p>

<p>[America?s</a> 25 Most Crime-Rattled Colleges, From Yale to Duke (PHOTOS) - The Daily Beast](<a href=“America’s 25 Most Crime-Rattled Colleges, From Yale to Duke (PHOTOS)”>America’s 25 Most Crime-Rattled Colleges, From Yale to Duke (PHOTOS))</p>

<p>The criteria used for the rankings is as follows:</p>

<p>" …We looked at four-year nonprofit private colleges and four-year public colleges with more than 6,000 total students, taking into account the numbers for each school’s primary campus and auxiliary campuses in the same metro area as the main campus. Our final dataset included more than 500 universities. The crimes we considered were: murder, negligent murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, car theft, and arson. Because not all crimes are the same, we devised a subjective weighting system based on crime severity. Burglary established our low-end baseline for weighting; car theft was weighted twice as much as burglary; assault and robbery, six times as much as burglary; arson and negligent manslaughter, 10 times as much as burglary; and murder, 20 times as much as burglary.</p>

<p>In addition to weighting, we considered each crime against total enrollment, to come up with a per-capita ratio. Finally, each per-capita ratio was compared to the overall cohort of more than 500 schools—to take into account whether each school’s per-capita ratio for each crime was relatively high or low—to determine our final list of America’s Most Crime-Rattled Colleges."</p>

<p>If you go to College Navigator, you can see the crime rates for any institution of higher learning. [College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics) by clicking on the ‘Campus Security’ tab.</p>

<p>For giggles, I compared Bates, Amherst, Tufts, Wesleyan, Trinity and Williams.</p>

<p>In 2010, Amherst had 14 Forcable Sex Offenses, compared to 10 for Tufts (with a far larger student population), 6 for Trinity, 4 for Wesleyan, 3 for Williams and 2 for Bates. Even remote Hamilton had more incidences than Trinity that year, with 7.</p>

<p>Illegal weapons: Amherst- 1, Tufts - 0, Wesleyan -0, Trinity -1, Williams -2, Bates -1.</p>

<p>Aggravated Assault: Amherst -0, Tufts-2, Wesleyan-0, Trinity-0, Williams-0, Bates-3.</p>

<p>Robbery: Amherst-1, Trinity -4… most others-0.</p>

<p>Arson: Amherst-2, Tufts-0, Wesleyan-0, Trinity-1, Williams-4, Bates-0.</p>

<p>Motor Vehicle Theft: Trinity had 10, Tufts, Wesleyan and Williams each had 1.</p>

<p>Burglary: Amherst -6, down from 21 and 38 in 2009 and 2008), Tufts - 20 (down from 29 & 43), Wesleyan - 17 (down from 35 & 37), Trinity 24 (down from 16 & 52).</p>

<p>Middlebury had more Burglaries than any NESCAC school in 2012…with 27. Go figure.</p>

<p>It’s all relative - please look at the facts before jumping to conclusions.</p>

<p>"…Middlebury had more Burglaries than any NESCAC school in 2012…with 27. Go figure."</p>

<p>Ooops… missed that typo. It was supposed to be 2010. Sorry</p>

<p>To respond to a couple points from Varitek, I would think that a Trinity student can have a wonderful time staying on campus and then making trips off campus by car. The young man who was mugged this past spring was walking just off campus at 1 in the morning on a weekend night–behavior that is just not recommended in ANY city. As a point of comparison, students at a similar college in a Midwestern city–Macalester College–live in the middle of a very safe St. Paul, Minnesota neighborhood–but students writing on their forum on this website have often pointed out that they have so many things going on at the campus that they do not leave often. My son attends Wesleyan, just twenty miles south of Hartford, and during weekends he is on campus. So it is not a huge deal.</p>

<p>My son left yesterday to begin his junior year at Trinity. While there have been some scary incidents reported, my son responds with “you have to be smart.” If you go on their website you will see that they have just hired a new head of safety - previous experience includes head of safety at Yale - another not-safe area. After a horrible off-campus (but bordering street) incident last spring, Trinity has made safety a top priority. I am hoping for good things. It is a great school!</p>