That’s the English way of saying “Your mother wore combat boots and your father smelled of elderberries.”
On my son’s floor this year there will be no first years. (BJ). Every single room wanted to come back even though there is no air conditioning and they have to cross the dreaded Midway.
‘Your work is puerile and under-dramatized. You lack any sense of structure, character and the Aristotelian unities.’
@caymusjordan Yes we are not happy about the vague and misleading way in which housing assignments were done and explained to families. And also the lack of details about beds avail for 1st years in each, so we could try to calculate the chances of a bad draw. We paid the deposit soon after she was admitted. We should have been told what was likely. They refused to disclose anything. They clearly want to hook families and then give the bad news when it is too late to modify plans. If this was a mild weather setting and low crime environment, we wouldn’t be nearly as frustrated.
Here’s the UCPD crime reporting, which shows about 500 annual violent crimes in the area UCPD patrols, with 300 of them being armed robbery, 30 sexual assaults. Please don’t attack me, it’s a very real concern and it’s not polite when you rah-rah boosters make parents feel like paranoid nuts for wanting their daughters safe. Obviously the longer a gal has to commute to food and class the more she is at risk; see insurance rates based on miles driven. https://safety-security.uchicago.edu/police/data_information/violent_crime_report/
“Your thought is jejune, your prose labored, your conclusions unsupported and otiose. I looked in vain for any sign of originality or good sense.”
This is the UCPD patrol area. It’s huge: https://d3qi0qp55mx5f5.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/safety-security/uploads/files/Extended_Patrol_Map.pdf
The patrol area covers four neighborhoods and approximately 55,000 residents. Hyde Park-South Kenwood, per the link you posted above, accounts for fewer than half of those crimes.
I completely agree that one sexual assault is one too many. In my opinion, there’s a lot more the university could do to prevent sexual assaults. I have expressed both views in these forums, many times, along with other criticisms of the university. But the most common perpetrators of campus sexual assault, by far, are fellow students. 85-90% of campus sexual assaults are perpetrated by people known to the survivors. https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/Pages/know-attacker.aspx. This isn’t about strange men in alleyways.
The way the media talks about crime ranges from unhelpful incident reports to downright harmful sensationalism. I understand your concerns, and where they come from. As a student, who’s spent two years here and explored the city at large more than most, what I’m trying to get at is that news coverage and the reality on the ground are two very different things. Violence isn’t random - it’s targeted, usually within the perpetrator’s social circle. And it’s rarer than the headlines let on: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurenbrooke-eisen/americas-faulty-perceptio_b_6878520.html
As for campus, it sees foot traffic at all hours. It’s well lit. The UCPD has officers on nearly every corner. Single-family homes near I-House have sold for upwards of a million dollars. That’s what I see as a student, and that’s my $0.02.
“Obviously the longer a gal has to commute to food and class the more she is at risk; see insurance rates based on miles driven”
Insurance rates for miles driven are higher for a guy at pretty much every single mile. The gals are simply considered to be lower risk. At every mile 
@coldbrew22 you do realize that your DD will be “commuting” with her friends and housemates, correct? The number of miles that she has to walk alone out of necessity will be minimal and the number she’ll have to walk alone at night: Zero. There simply aren’t any supportive statistics showing the first year females of UChicago at notable risk of stranger assault due to I-House’s proximity to the quads or the dining halls. Your concerns have a genuine basis to them but the direction you are going is nonsensical.
@coldbrew22 its not too late to modify your plans, you can withdraw, take a gap year and apply somewhere else next year.
Parents rightly worry about the safety of their kids. But the university has historically not been a place praised for its safety but rather for other qualities. Academically it has been known as a place of independent thinking, of original, free-wheeling and even harsh conflicts of ideas - an argumentative sort of place, where new ideas are tried out, analyzed, critiqued and re-thought. That history lies behind the Chicago Statement on Freedom of Expression, one of the tenets of which is that kids at a university should not be protected against hearing ideas they don’t like, and where “safe spaces” in the modern metaphorical sense are discouraged.
I connect that feature of the history of the university with another one - its location on the south side of Chicago in a vast sea of urban poverty. One of the university’s strongest departments over many years has been Sociology, especially the “Chicago School” of that subject, which pioneered the meticulous description of relations inside definable urban groups. The natural laboratory for such studies lies all around the university. Students have come to Chicago - I was once such a student - precisely because they wanted some experience of the grittiness of urban life and some way of thinking about and grappling with the reality of poverty. Again, safety was not the goal.
None of this is to say that recklessness of one’s personal safety is a good thing or one encouraged by the university. However, obsessiveness about safety is also not a good thing and not consistent with the history of the university or what it can offer to the right kind of kid. As a great mind once said: “It seems a pity to come to the U of C and live cautiously, whether physically, psychologically or intellectually.”
I House advantages:
- Metra: the quickest, best way to go downtown/loop/airport
- Ida Noyes for movies, alcohol…
“I am a bit nervous crossing the Midway at least twice a day.”
Me too. Sometimes the snow gets so high, it messes up your shoes and your jeans. And those drivers on the Midway are not exactly the nicest bunch. It also feels like walking across the midway presents more risk of slipping on the ice. I had the impression that they de-ice (and plow) the streets and sidewalks north of midway better. Maybe that has changed…
And I’d rather walk through the When Harry Met Sally gate everyday. Its an overall better view of Hogwarts to start your day right.
The dismissive and rude tone of some commenters here is really off-putting. I’m not sure if you think you’re helping the university with your patronizing “mean girl” routine, but you’re really not.
Let’s all gang up on the mum who’s worried about her daughter’s safety while she’s placed in the most isolated dorm, in a single room no less, while the south side of Chicago’s dealing with historic levels of violent crime, and a murder just happened on her route to her meal commons. So classy, so inviting.
International House is not a great place for first years and it’s certainly not worth what they’re forcing us to pay. Maybe there are a few families or students who want i-house, we are not one of them.
"I House advantages:
- Metra: the quickest, best way to go downtown/loop/airport
- Ida Noyes for movies, alcohol… " @FStratford
Grasping at straws. I don’t think any first years placed international house dorm in their top 3.
Sorry for being mean, but I don’t think you have any idea how far outside the University of Chicago norms your posts register. I am usually critical of @marlowe1 's nostalgia for the bad old days when Chicago undergraduates expected (and maybe even longed) to suffer for their love of learning, but he’s right that until about five minutes ago, roughly speaking, it would have been unthinkable for a University of Chicago student to display the attitudes you are expressing here. I understand: it’s you, not your daughter, who is saying these things, but you make it sound like you both share those feelings. A lot of people at Chicago may react really negatively to them; they are just not consistent with the spirit of the university.
Substantively, you’re right that I-House is not as nice as the other large dorms now, but you’re just wrong about the degree of difference. I-House isn’t that bad, and the other dorms aren’t so great. None of the Chicago dorms is anything like a bargain based on what is charged for them, which is why the vast majority of students still move out of university housing by their third year. They can do better, and they do.
I’m sure that very few entering first-years had I-House among their top three choices, but simple math tells me that I-House represents something like 20-25% of the university’s undergraduate housing capacity at the moment. Basically, one in four or five of all first-year students are going to be there, maybe even more if (as seems likely) it has a lower rate of returning second- and third-years students compared to the other large dorms. There are hundreds of kids who are in your daughter’s position.
@coldbrew22 My child is a rising second year student…lived in North last year. As a parent, paying full tuition, I was not really thrilled with the accommodations. The room, a double, was tiny. The overall feeling of the dorm was very sterile. I was not surprised that my kid wanted to move off campus this year. I-House, from what I hear, has a good community feeling and I know of several students who had a Fine year living there.
I also worry about the crime in Chicago even though it is mostly limited to very specific areas of the city. It is still scary nonetheless. A lot of the posters on the UChicago group need to realize that things have changed since their glory days at UChicago…it’s interesting to read your anecdotes about UChicago 20 years ago but it’s not really helpful to current students, prospective students or parents. I wouldn’t dream of commenting on my alma mater’s group page…I haven’t been there for decades so what the hell do I know?
DunBoyer and HydeSnark are current students.
Everyone agrees that I-House’s location is less than ideal in tems of distance from the quad and that it really sucks in terms of dining. But I’d venture to say that in terms of upkeep and nice common spaces it beats well-located Snell-Hitchcock hands down. (Sorry, Snell-Hitchcock people. I know it has many other redeeming qualities and people love it, but that place could use a little TLC. I will say, however, that I was so impressed by the nice young man from Snell who took us on a tour and was very welcoming when my daughter and I were nosing around at admitted student days. Absolutely didn’t have to do that for us - he could have just walked right on by.) I also think I-House could be fun for freshman socially because there will be so many of them there!
And here’s an idea to help with dining - let I-House undergrads grab breakfast with a meal swipe at the little cafe in I-House https://ihouse.uchicago.edu/about/tiffin_cafe/.
@Regalia123 - sure - we can stick with the “Apples-to-Apples” / Here-and-Now comparison that @coldbrew22 so adamantly has requested. No history or experience of the place, no wisdom or perspective. Under this particular metric: I-House is the least popular dorm, Hyde Park is not without violent crime (it may even be higher than Cambridge) and a parent is so very unhappy about spending $70 grand to the point of coming across as inconsolable. There remains one solution to this dilemma and it’s already been suggested a couple of times. However, @coldbrew22 hasn’t asked for solutions - perhaps is just here to rant.
However, I’d argue that ranting w/o trying to gain some perspective would be a tad short-sighted. There are plenty of alums - thousands, in fact, who survived the “Glory Days” when crime in the area was actually much higher and the campus wasn’t quite as stunning as it is today. What they hell do they know? Well - a lot. For one thing thing they’ve kept in touch with the place. In fact, I dare say they actually know a bit more than some of the people currently freaking out.
@coldbrew22 has a choice: stick to the Apples-toApples/Here-and-Now or take a deep breath and really assess the scenario in the context of the transitions that the College is experiencing (all of them good, none w/o a few growing pains). To me one seems the wiser choice, but everyone is different.
The last time a student died from a violent crime on or near campus was 2007. This piece talks about that: https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0812/chicago_journal/community_unsettled.shtml.
Before that, you have to go back to 1977.
“Will my kid be caught in a crossfire as they walk to breakfast and shot 19 times by lunch without a bulletproof vest?” is…actually an understandable question, given the way reporters and the POTUS talk about Chicago. But that narrative is at odds with the facts, as parents, alums, and current students have said several times in this thread. Campus feels safe, and the statistics bear this out.
It’s a shame this issue dominates a lot of the online discussion, when there are others we talk about far too little. Mental health, academic hurdles, tight finances, family emergencies, sexual assault, and the like, not necessarily in that order, affect no small number of students. Far more than some mythical Chicago where bullets constantly whiz across the Lab School’s sports field, past the windows of Ida Noyes Hall, and through Rockefeller Chapel’s doors. Which, for the record, is the stuff you’ll pass walking from I-House to the quad.
@Dunboyne yes its adds to an imbecilic. false narrative that I find ridiculous. I have no issues with my DD walking around campus at night including the Midway as I have done so myself. As in any big city I keep aware of my surroundings. Its interesting how many people don’t as I remember watching a video of a man playing Pokeman Go and getting mugged as he had no idea who or what was going on around him (and he had earphones in). The fact is that students are 10x more likely to commit suicide then they are to get killed in a shooting. That’s what the parents need to worry about, and its something they can directly affect.