I’m pretty sure this is already the case. Most nights, I will spot guards at 60th and Ellis, 60th and University, 60th and Woodlawn, 61st and Ellis (IIRC), and in cars patrolling the general area.
Given the above, and more importantly the combination of lighting, frequent foot traffic, and visibility in all directions (not a lot of dark alleyways in the middle of a field of grass), I personally feel safe crossing the Midway at basically any hour of the day or night.
If there’s anything to be worried about, it’s the drivers; pedestrian crossings are apparently a strange and unfamiliar concept to the average Chicagoan.
“Anyone have insight on whether this interferes with the students’ use of the first-floor lounge or other amenities?”
Things might have changed over the years but back when I lived in I-House as a grad student and the International aspect was in full swing, I never knew events were going on! The lounge and most of the first floor were completely separate from the event areas. As a corporate recruiter visiting I-House in later years to hold various events, we were always in totally separate areas from the students. There might have been one event held in the lounge when I was in B-School there - but now that Booth has its own building that probably doesn’t go on anymore.
I House is actually quite large and can accommodate hundreds of students and their activities concurrently with other events for other groups. Security on the first floor might be different now that it’s 100% undergrad, but that would be the only change I’d expect.
“I am a bit nervous crossing the Midway at least twice a day.”
“Given the above, and more importantly the combination of lighting, frequent foot traffic, and visibility in all directions (not a lot of dark alleyways in the middle of a field of grass), I personally feel safe crossing the Midway at basically any hour of the day or night.”
My D would concur with the second statement. She said she is NEVER alone crossing the Midway from BJ. There’s a lot of foot traffic, given the number who live on 60th and 61st as well as all the stuff happening at Logan (classes, performances, etc.).
Unfortunately there was a murder on the Midway at Woodlawn the other night but it appeared to be a deliberate hit from the little I know about it. Happened shortly after Midnight while the gentleman was stopped at a red light.
This is why I wrote my disclaimer first. My old distrust of everywhere south of 59th dies hard
I have to say Midway between Woodlawn and Ellis is very well lit at night. By the time Woodlawn Residential Commons is done, the foot traffic between south of 60th Street and Main Quad will be like at the Loop.
As for the murder last Wednesday, here is what Hyde Park Herald says:
"Candace Anderson, the mother of Armani Harris, a 25-year-old Kenwood Academy High School alumnus who was shot and killed early this morning on the Midway Plaisance, is holding a vigil for him this evening at the Midway.
Police are searching for a suspect but have no one in custody.
Harris was stopped at a red light at Woodlawn Avenue at 12:05 a.m. when the suspect pulled beside him and fired several shots into Harris’ vehicle. He was shot in the head, left shoulder, lower right arm and right thigh and drove westbound on the Midway Plaisance before crashing into a tree.
The Chicago Police reported that Harris was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center. The University of Chicago Department of Safety and Security issued a security alert about the homicide at 1:40 a.m."
Whether this is a gang related shooting will be just wild speculation.
Guessing that because robbery wasn’t mentioned, it must have been a deliberate hit. Gangs or drugs - or both - the likely motivating factor. Unnerving of course - what if students had been crossing at that red light? But likely not random.
@JBStillFlying Thanks for the info on I-House events. I didn’t realize there were separate event facilities - I was thinking that some of the events would be in the lounge. We went to our Kansas City area send-off today, and some current students said I-House residents can sometimes get free tickets to events there.
As of now, background details suggest this shooting was gang-related - with a twist. Harris did a lot of work to keep people off the streets and out of gangs - and that necessarily involves a fair bit of interaction with current, former, and future gang members. Which, no matter how good someone’s intentions may be, is a risk factor because it creates opportunities for personal disagreements with gang members - who have access to weapons and are willing to use them.
It’s impossible to say for sure why this happened, but in general the odds of random passersby or bystanders being shot out of the blue are vanishingly low.
@85bears46 The reason I responded as I did to your post, disclaimer and all, is partly to do with the people reading these boards. Many (some parents, most prospective students) have spent little time in Hyde Park - so, unlike current students, they don’t have personal experience to weight these claims against. And individual anecdotes or police blotters aren’t necessarily all that helpful in this respect.
Streets in Hyde Park have a lot of pedestrians - but few members of the general public know exactly how many, how the overall crime rate stacks up, or what the likelihood of any given pedestrian (never mind them personally) suffering a crime is. I recently attended a workshop that focused specifically on crime reporting, and participants generally agreed that reports on individual incidents weren’t helpful. They A. made people feel afraid, and B. were no help in gauging one’s individual risk.
But broader stories and context require time and effort - when many papers are in a financial bind. So we’re left with the “XYZ happened last week, and a 2X year-old male is in custody” reports. This way of telling stories is great for newspapers and local TV; the stories are easy to report because CPD will give you the five Ws, and they get clicks. But they’re not particularly informative, and can actually misinform people. Because crime stories are easy, the media runs more of them than most outlets did 25 years ago - and polls show that most people think crime’s up over that period (it’s actually dropped precipitously).
Which is all a long way of saying, I don’t know how helpful posting individual crime reports or general concerns about safety is to the people reading these forums. Especially prospective/admitted students - who don’t have the experience current students do to put CC anecdotes into perspective.
For our student visit last summer, we stayed at the one hotel in Hyde Park and he and I walked to campus from there at 9pm and back at 10:30 pm. While we walked we were definitely aware of the surrounding areas, we never really felt scared. There is a “park” in the middle that some “kids” were hanging out at 9pm, but other than that we really didn’t even see anyone in the neighborhood area, that include police on every corner. If the police were there, they blend in very well. Of course it was summer, so maybe their presence is less intense when less students are on campus.
@Kathy V To be clear, I’m not sure what events are currently going on at I-House or what rooms are being used for them. It’s possible that space the students typically use might be unavailable some nights. BTW, that’s not so unusual in any dorm with stately lounges or sitting rooms. Someone’s going to commandeer it for something or other once in a while. Each house will have its own lounge so the students should never be deprived of dorm-specific areas to hang out or study.
@DunBoyer - I was wondering if that might have been the angle as I noticed the Trib header but couldn’t read the article (won’t pay to get over the paywall).
I am reading the reddit on UChicago. I can’t link it here because of CC regulation. But there are a couple of posts from students/parents/trolls who are really upset about the I-House assignment. One of them is actually demanding a refund. Another one is considering going on a gap year to try to get to a better dorm next year. In replies a few current students living in I-House state that I-House is a great dorm and the distance factor is being overblown as unnecessary worry.
I am inclined to believe that dorms are just dorms and so this I-House controversy is purely pre-Frosh hyperbole. By mid October we won’t be seeing any more incoming freshman complaining about their I-House assignment.
Not sure I’ve ever heard of that level of hyperbole before. Refund? Gap year? Have any of these kids actually been in some of the other dorms? We aren’t exactly talking about The Ritz vs. Motel 6.
If Frosh are undone by their dorm assignment, can’t imagine their state of mind after two quarters of Sosc. or 7th week of Calc. 152.
This is why I think those posts may not be written by real parents or students but by Internet Trolls.
I am thinking about the stress level from Calculus 163 or any Honors STEM class compared to dorm assignment. Nonetheless, I agree with you (as usual) @JBStillFlying
I haven’t seen anything like that on the parents FB page - many were upset with what seemed to be random placement, but have not seen anyone wanting a refund or taking a gap year…
Our daughter was placed International House and we’re very unhappy. We’re paying over 70 thousand dollars per year and she’s stuck in a single, in a building known for being anti-social, with very long walks to everything, with no central AC. Next are you going to tell me Hyde Park is as safe as Buffalo Grove. And the weather in the winter (and humid warm months) isn’t so bad. There are years of complaints on various college message boards specific to I-House. Paying the same housing and meal plan price as her counterparts in the new North and South complexes, which are closer to everything and have on-site dining commons, is a slap in the face. The absolute least they could do is give students stuck in I-House $500 Maroon dollars, instead of the standard $100 given with the mandatory meal plan. As it stands we’re going to be forced to pick up the tab on meals when she can’t get to a commons. It’s a nearly 1.5 mile walk to and fro her house’s dining table. I’m sorry, it’s just not fair, to her or to families paying. And please spare me how rough you had it when you were in college or how my daughter is an entitled brat for noticing the deficiencies. That’s apples and oranges. Apples to apples is her living situation to 90% of her peers at the College who have superior dorms, in superior locations, with superior food access for the same costs as we pay.
Please excuse the lateness of my reply. We are, as you know, far from civilization. The mailman braves the elements as best he can, but the mountain passes are treacherous, and your letter of last month only reached me this morning.
The Almanac did not lie; the first snows of the year fell in September, and were far from the last. I was forced to abandon my first expedition shortly after leaving International House. But the doctors at UChicago are a talented bunch, and the cold only claimed four of my toes.
If there is any silver lining to the cold, it’s that the brigands who followed us at first have mostly turned back. Only three of our number have been mugged in the last five minutes - can you imagine?
Resupplying Camp Midway has been harder than expected. Before setting out, I placed an order for paraffin and whisky, to warm the expedition’s tents and hearts. But the icebreaker captain charged with that delivery sailed south, not west to the Museum of Science and Industry. He was eight days late, and for one agonizing week I feared all might be lost. When our supplies arrived - and arrive they did - a great cheer went up among the men
Now, with a fresh team of dogs and a refurbished sled, I am resolved to make the attempt again. I hope to leave this week, and beat the December snowstorms to the punch. My housemates worry it will be dangerous, but we cannot afford to wait until spring. Come hell or high water, I will reach the double doors of Bartlett.
The big complaint seems to be that the students aren’t getting “new” housing. Obviously it’s not possible to put the entire first year class in North and South! And there are two other “old” dorms lacking central air so a good part of the student body just has to survive w/o climate control. Given that upper div students have been opting to return to res. life in increasing numbers rather than exit for apartment living somewhere, and unless they are all hogging the new space and leaving the old for the first years, it’s probably not the case that air conditioning factors in all that much. VUE53, I’m sure, has A/C and yet it appears the College has struggled to convince kids to move over there.
@coldbrew22 - not sure who you’ve been talking to but your daughter’s safety will not be compromised by walking along 59th to get to class LOL. Not quite Buffalo Grove, but not unsafe.
For sure, the distance to the house table at Cathey is a drag. And while its historical reputation as Worst. Dorm. Ever. might have had more to do with the large - and now non-existent - number of grad students on site than anything else, it’s probably the case that the horror stories will linger on for a bit just for the fun of it - just like how UChicago is STILL where fun comes to die even though that’s not exactly compatible with Dollar Milk Shakes on the Quad. I lived in I-House as a grad student about 30 years ago. While I didn’t care for it then, it was a HUGE improvement over what undergrads were living in at the time! Now the shiny new dorms are the popular abode and I-House is the Dog House, even though by both historical and current standards it’s neither the farthest from campus, nor in the worst shape.
Despite its unfortunate and lingering public personna, I’m wondering whether I-House’s REAL reputation may change going forward. For one thing, it’s no longer a grad dorm with only one or two undergrad houses but a 100% undergrad dorm with five houses and what must be at least 350 college residents of all years living there. Some of those houses came over from the old closed res. halls and so have been around for awhile. For another, sounds like there will be a healthy number of first years this upcoming year.
This time next year it might be the “ghosts” complaining about all the noise and “community”. You never know.
@coldbrew22 My daughter ended up with a single in I-House too. She preferenced neither the room type nor the dorm and got a little teary when she first got the news, but, as her grandma would say, “horriblizing” it does no good. After getting connected with others who are in the same boat on GroupMe (PM me if you’d like my daughter to send your daughter an invite), she is actually looking forward to it. We also decided to look at her single as a positive, doing some extra shopping and personalizing it more than we would have with a double.
Google tells me it is 0.7 miles to Cathay Dining Commons which is a 14 minute walk, 5 minute bike ride. Bartlett is a 13 minute walk, 0.6 miles. (Maybe this will help avoid the “freshman 15”.) For bad weather, there is a shuttle with a stop right at I-House that goes straight to the quad. I told her she will probably end up returning to her room less often during the day, but UChicago has many beautiful places to hang out in buildings on the quad. As for AC, although I now live in Kansas City, where it’s a must, I lived in Chicago for 15 years after college and never had central air in any of the 6 vintage buildings I lived in - it’s practically a non-issue.
Maybe my perspective is colored by the fact that at my alma mater Notre Dame, students do not even have the option to preference room type, dorm location or their roommate - all are random. A single in I-House may well turn out to be less than ideal, but my random placement at ND yielded a best friend who was my maid of honor and is still my bestie 30 years later.
ugh, as a Boilermaker that is tough for me to see, but it does appear to be a transitional thing. My son was down to the Naval Academy and UChicago. He did the Summer Seminar his Junior/Senior Summer and stayed in the dorm for a week (there is only one, the largest dorm in the United States where every single student in the Academy lives). They had three and four to a room that was smaller then my dorm at Purdue and they have to keep food in rubbermaid containers or the mice/rats will eat it. The location to the dining hall is really close, but pleebes all eat at attention and have to be quizzed during meals.
I asked him if he had any regrets in choosing UChicago over the USNA. He just smiles.
Last fall, over two dozen members of the Harvard Class of '21 ended up in overflow housing about a half a mile away from where all the other first years were grouped in and around Harvard Yard. Had they not already rescinded about a dozen or so admission offers due to offensive FB comments, the number of overflow-frosh would have been higher. There were definitely concerns about isolation; however - unlike the rest of Harvard’s freshman dorms - DeWolfe did have A/C.
