My D is set on applying to UChicago as her top choice and, quite frankly, I’m concerned that the violence in Chicago will impact her ability to fully experience what the city has to offer culturally, an important factor in her college selection process. I understand that the university does a great job with security guards, shuttles, etc., however, a Chicago Tribune map of 2015 shootings shows that all neighbors immediately surrounding Hyde Park have had numerous shootings. In fact, 3 appear to be on or very near campus (S.Drexel@54th, S.Drexel@Hyde Park Blvd, S.Ellis@54th).
So, my question for current students is this, how does this issue impact your life on campus and your ability to enjoy what Chicago has to offer? Do you go into the city center and, if so, do you only go by taxi/Uber and not public transportation? On campus, do you feel cautious or unsafe when traveling to the dorms on the edges of campus? What have you experienced or observed on campus in terms of illicit or sketchy activities?
Thank you in advance for sharing your experience with a concerned mom!
Not a current student, but I’ve been to Chicago on an extended visit and my mom corresponds regularly with a few fellow alums who are still in town (one is doing interviews with the uni right now). Students need to have the common sense to avoid dark alleys at 2 AM, but Hyde Park has been undergoing gradual gentrification for a couple of decades now. The area’s come a long way since Sudhir Venkatesh wandered into a den of crack dealers while carrying out a survey of the locals.
Even if most students had the money to make regular Uber or taxi trips downtown, few would. This is Chicago, not Syria.
Keep in mind that many of the shootings are gang-related and many of them do not happen in Hyde Park, as you noted. Many of the stories reported by Chicago Tribune that I’ve read reported the victims were grown men who are either black or Latino - women and children seem to be the minority victims. I have family members and acquaintances who live in Hyde Park and Bridgeport, and they have never experienced the horrors of a shooting since they aren’t gang affiliated and aren’t mistaken for a shooter’s target. They also don’t find themselves in seedier parts of their respective neighborhoods late at night.
As you can see via link that’s a lot of shootings. Despite that, reality is really kind to UChicago and its students: To my knowledge, I am not aware of anyone affiliated with the university being killed or hurt by these happenings. You will notice that according to the map, Hyde Park is pretty much a bubble from other neighborhoods that surround it.
You must understand that victims are predetermined (men, either black or Latino), for whatever reason; they are targets. Sometimes innocent lives are lost. Sometimes the shootings can bleed into Hyde Park, which is unfortunate. I think students are aware of where to not go once they step off the campus and how to commute to and from places with safety in mind, so in a way if you don’t go looking for trouble then trouble doesn’t go looking for you, at least in this situation when it comes to a true urban atmosphere. Unless you’re Sudhir Venkatesh.
Also not a student; I’m a parent of recent graduates, one of whom still works in Hyde Park (and bicycles there about 12 miles each way almost every day from the Northside).
Of the places on the map you mentioned, only one (54th and Ellis) was in an area frequented by students; that particular shooting was highly non-random – it was a deliberate attack on a car parked back in an alleyway with three adults sitting inside for a long time. Another was about two long blocks north of the northernmost Chicago dorm, but in an area not that popular with students. There were actually a couple more on the map that were within a block of the southern edge of the campus, too. But none of these involved students in any way. As far as I am aware, in the past 30+ years one student – a graduate student from Africa – has been shot anywhere near campus, and when that happened it was front-page news and the shooter was caught within days. (He didn’t live near campus at all. He had traveled more than 10 miles to commit a one-man crime spree that night.
My kids traveled (and still travel) around Hyde Park without any constraint whatsoever. My daughter hosted a radio show that started at 4:00 am for a while, and she would walk alone diagonally across the campus to get to the station at 3:30 am. My son did get mugged, once, breaking all the rules: he was walking alone very late at night off campus in the middle of the summer, when no one was around. Some teenagers knocked him down and took his wallet. It bothered him for a few days, and then it didn’t bother him anymore. No one they knew was a victim of a crime more serious than that. The terrible things that happened to students were the sort of terrible things that happen to students everywhere. Drugs, alcohol, and bad relationships with fellow students can be serious problems; stray bullets aren’t.
Students travel all over the city on buses and the El, and sometimes even the Metra train, depending on where they are living – it’s one of the best things about going to the University of Chicago.
Even though we communicated via PM, I wanted to post a reply here for others with similar concerns.
I am the parent of a 2nd year who says he feels very safe on and around campus. When traveling around the city, he typically uses public transportation unless he is traveling to / from the airport with luggage or we are in town and spring for taxi / Uber fare. I have spent a few days visiting twice since last fall. One time we (husband, younger D, and I) stayed at the Hyatt Place in Hyde Park; the other time we (older D and I) stayed downtown. Both times we traveled throughout the city using buses, the EL, Metra express, and taxis depending on time of day, the weather, where we were going, etc. When we stayed in Hyde Park, we walked all over the place. The only time I felt slightly uncomfortable was when we caught the EL at a stop south of campus. In the future, I would (and have) take the bus (6 or 2 I think?) to a different EL station.
Lest you think I’m a naive person from a state with more cows than people, I attended grad school in NYC in a neighborhood that, at the time, had the highest murder rate in the 5 boroughs. As part of my grad school experience, I had to commute from this neighborhood to the South Bronx. I even had my own personal stalker for a short time. Fun times. U Chicago feels far safer to me than that neighborhood ever did.
I haven’t seen anything illicit or sketchy on campus. As a graduate student, I live on the opposite side of Hyde Park and have walked through Hyde Park during the day and at night. I haven’t felt particularly unsafe. The University posts A LOT of security and police on MANY street corners of campus in the late afternoon and at night. Most of the dorms are within heavily policed areas.
Getting to downtown Chicago is very easy via public transit - take the Metra Electric. It’s mostly ridden by commuters and is perfectly fine.
As of next year the CTA will be free for all undergraduates with their student ID so it probably wouldn’t be very economical to take the Metra (which is like $3.50 each trip I believe - it adds up), but the L and the buses are just as safe.
My kids each spent two years living less than two blocks from the Metra station, and the only time either of them took the Metra was to get to an internship one had in River North. Apart from that, the Metra really didn’t get them where they wanted to go, which tended to be the South Loop (the Art Institute), Belmont, Wicker Park, Logan Square, Lincoln Park. They could get anywhere in the city in the CTA system (buses and els) for a maximum of $2.50 one way; if they started on the train it would cost $5.50+ one way. Plus, the bus stop was even closer than the Metra, and CTA has great apps that let you wait inside until your bus is almost there. So . . . not so much Metra use.
I’m ambivalent about the University signing on for the CTA’s “free” student program. I hope it will encourage more undergraduates to explore the city. However, at least in the past, it had a very high cost, which I’m sure is being loaded into tuition. Since Chicago is not a college lots of students commute to on the CTA, even the most aggressive public transit consumers in the Chicago student body didn’t use the system enough to justify the per-student cost. (The CTA does, or did, run what amounts to a free shuttle service in Hyde Park for the university, but that’s not involved in the general transit system.)
D attends a different university in Chicago which offers the “free” U-Pass for CTA. It’s $135 per semester and is itemized as a required fee. She has to pay attention to safety concerns more than she would at home, but those concerns don’t keep her from enjoying all the city has to offer. They keep her from using the red line to get back to campus by herself at night. She’s taken public transportation down to UChicago and back during the day by herself (she chose the bus over the el to avoid walking too near Washington park) and had no trouble. I don’t know if she would do that at night. She’s been to museums, the opera, out to the suburbs, to a baseball game, to church, and all over. She gets to the store (there’s nothing in walking distance to her campus) with no problem. She seems to have fun. She learned what safety precautions were necessary early on and has just learned to be aware of her surroundings (this doesn’t come naturally for her!) and to think things through before she heads off campus. She finds ways to do what she wants without unnecessarily compromising safety.
U-Pass is being passed into tuition but will be covered by financial aid. No one’s EFC should change.
A girl in my house rides the red or green line back to campus at night alone weekly and has never felt particularly unsafe. You are rarely alone anyways, nearly every time I’ve gone there were other people on the train who also switched to the 55 to get back to campus. The red line drops you off on a highly trafficked part of Garfield where you are highly unlikely to get mugged. The green line stop is a little sketchier but If I take the green line I usually go all the way to Cottage Grove and just walk back. The Cottage Grove station is only two blocks south of the edge of campus and is pretty safe.
And again, as mentioned above, the 2 and 6 lets you get downtown without having to leave Hyde Park before you get off at the Loop. On Friday and Saturday nights there is a free shuttle to the South Loop operated by the university.
No one uses the Metra. It just isn’t necessary. It’s too infrequent, too expensive, and doesn’t take ventra.
I lived in Hyde Park for 8 years. We had 1 burglary while we were out but in hindsight we did not have appropriate locks on our door. Never saw any crime or know anyone who had any serious issues just things like any campus like bike thefts, laptops, etc. There are homeless people who can make you feel uncomfortable at times but not dangerous. My room mates and I walked everywhere and never felt scared. I did not take the L ever but took the Metra frequently to shop, eat out, and go to the museum. During studies at GA Tech almost everyone I knew was mugged and many at gun point it seemed and that was never the case at UChicago. There is constant police presence in Hyde Park. When my parents visited they may have felt unsafe because it is so different from the suburbs but in reality it was just a different vibe. Being smart is important in terms of walking with friends, not seeking out dangerous stuff (like drugs), staying in areas known to be safe, and not being off the campus during very late night hours.
In terms of transport, the University offers the “South Loop” shuttle on Friday and Saturday evenings. They pick up on campus and drop off at Roosevelt in South Loop. I will admit that getting out of HP can be difficult, and students more often than not use Uber/Lyft (have rarely seen people use taxis) on the weekends.
As far as violent crime, I wouldn’t worry about that. UCPD, along with CPD, very heavily patrol the boundaries of campus (out of sight from most students), and the few gang-related crimes that occur in HP are the exception. They are very proactive about “accompanying” vehicles clearly don’t belong in HP that attempt to drive though.
I’d worry more about the petty crimes, e.g. theft, burglaries (not an issue if you live in dorms), and non-violent robberies. These are the absolutely worst a student would experience, and it comes down to being smart — use the shuttles at night, don’t walk through dark alleys, etc.
Having grown up absolutely sheltered (the crime rate in my suburb rounds to zero), coming to HP was a very seamless transition.
When I was a student some decades ago there was danger in living on the periphery of Hyde Park. Students wanting to live in apartments often could not find anything in HP proper. In those days lots of students lived in Woodlawn and South Shore for that reason. Here are some of the things that happened to me, beginning with the more trivial and ascending to the very serious, in or about the apartments I shared with two others, first on Dorchester just south of the midway and later in South Shore…
–Some kids threw a cherry bomb through our open window on a hot night (kind of funny but could have been more serious).
–Our paperboy came to collect twice in a month from us because he had been mugged and all his money and records taken from him earlier in the month (not serious for us - but we paid him a second time).
–Walking the half-block to the Midway I felt the impact of a thrown brick striking my rear. The boys who threw it were my age and thought I was disrespecting them by turning my back on them. When I turned to confront them they became friendly. I never let on that the brick had hurt me, and of course it could have been much worse. I came away feeling sort of proud of myself.
–A woman’s dead body (not of a student) turned up one morning in the vacant lot next to our apartment block. Nothing to do with our lives as students, but a shocking instance of how some of those around us were living. God knows what the story behind it was.
–Our apartment was burgled early one morning when we were all asleep. The predator had brazenly picked the lock of the front door. I heard him pacing around in the living room and then looked into his eyes as he peered into my bedroom through a rip in the curtain over a glass pane. He absconded without much to show for his efforts. That was creepy. We got a better lock.
–In a more complicated incident our back door was broken down by some neighborhood residents searching for a boy they thought had been abducted (in fact my roommate, who had a black girlfriend, was merely giving the boy a talking to for having done some mischief or other - he liked to play with these kids). That incident could have been serious - the police were called. I remember hearing the black officer saying to the black residents: “These white boys were well-meaning, but they just don’t get it.” The white officer was at the same time saying to us, “You boys were playing with fire here.” They were both right. The situation ended calmly except for my being royally ticked at my roommate.
–Far more seriously, in a different apartment (this one in the South Shore neighborhood, which was then about equally black and white) a U. of C. student was killed in the adjoining apartment block - knifed to death - by a burglar who she had interrupted. That shook us up considerably.
I suppose none of these things would or could have happened in a university residence or in Hyde Park proper. However, I didn’t regret then and don’t regret now the experience of these events or the many times over the years, sometimes in Hyde Park and around the university, that I felt some tincture of danger, guilt or unease in living so near to such a different world. Education comes in many forms.
@marlow1, I liked your post above because I loved the message in your last paragraph. (I also got a kick out of this: The situation ended calmly except for my being royally ticked at my roommate.)
Although my experiences were not as dramatic as marlow1’s, I also attended an urban university in a sketchy neighborhood and don’t regret the year I spent living in an apartment outside the bubble. Better neighborhoods do not guarantee safety either. My sister was mugged at gunpoint at UCLA while walking back to her dorm from the library. My husband was mugged right in front of the science building at Harvard.
My S graduated from UChicago in 2014 and still lived in Hyde Park. He works in the loop and takes the bus every day.
I’ve been following this thread closely as my D is applying as well. Unfortunately there are no truly safe colleges that guarantee their safety 100%. Educating ourselves and our children and praying that they are safe is what we are ultimately left with. Hoping that your kiddos get in and stay safe.
I grew up in Chicago and currently live in the suburbs. I consider the UChicago neighborhood to be a huge negative for that school. My daughter has applied and I am very concerned about the area. I especially worry that she will be assigned to a dorm that is on the outskirts of campus. My family (and extended family), all Chicagoans, comment how the university is in a terrible neighborhood.
So my D attended an overnight and the Columbus Day open house. I realize it’s a slip of time compared to living there but she said that she always felt safe on campus. The students she encountered also said that they felt safe. They did talk to her about safety precautions but I think that is a given in any urban campus. She also saw a police presence.
Bad things also happen in rural colleges. Look up the Cleary Act.
I’m a social worker who worked with first responders. Crime happens everywhere. We also live in an urban neighborhood and not in the suburbs so safety is something we keep in mind always.
Get informed and make informed choices and that’s all we can do. If a school makes any student or parent too uncomfortable then perhaps it is not the right fit. It really is about the academic, social and environmental fit. Good luck to everyone.