<p>College campuses (including prestigious predominantly white ones) have higher rates of rape and sexual assault than any neighborhood I know of within the 50 states. But most of the crime is student-on-student.</p>
<p>Bad neighborhoods…</p>
<p>Yes, mini, I was definitely thinking about that as I was reading through this thread. I am one of the offenders here, I guess, who started a “how bad is the neighborhood around . . .” thread. I can honestly say that as a mother of a daughter, I was thinking about crime – rape, robbery, assault, especially crime against women. Do I simply assume urban high crime neighborhoods are black or hispanic neighborhoods? No, not at all. I grew up in a city and knew to be wary whereever I was. I’m not sure my suburban daughter has my built-in self-preservation radar. Your point on a similar thread, about date rape and student-on-student crime, did make me see my concerns in a different light, however, and made me see some of my stereotypes for what they are.</p>
<p>Okay - there is no way I’m going to read through this entire thread but just based off the title I say, “No! Just because it’s a black neighborhood doesn’t mean it’s a bad neighborhood.”</p>
<p>If it’s a DIRTY and run-down looking neighborhood then I might have second thoughts about walking there alone at night. If I see a bunch of black, white, purple, yellow - whatever - people walking around looking like they’re trying to sell “stuff,” making sure they are not being watched or leering at me as I drive/walk by then I won’t feel very safe but on the flip side if I walk around and I see black, white, whatever people wearing decent clothing, driving at least well-maintained (if not newer) vehicles and no empty beer bottles or other debris lying on the sidewalks then I feel better. </p>
<p>Edited (added): Filth is the key for me and just using that as a basis for “bad neighborhood” I would be able to feel uncomfortable in certain areas without seeing even one person.</p>
<p>Still, the “Harlem is a bad nabe” type argument (applicable to many places in the U.S. now besides Harlem) cracks me up when I realize that many people who say it couldn’t afford to live there now! (But it least it passes the Bill Oreilly test: No bboys in the restaurant screaming
"Bring me some ice tea M*<strong><em>f</em></strong>**! Bring me some iced tea!)<<</p>
<p>Yes, it’s true that a townhouse that you can see the sky through the roof is now $1,000,000. However, don’t downplay the violence around the projects–I teach in Central Harlem, and each year one of our students has either had a family member murdered, has had a family member murder someone else, or in one case has been the one to kill someone. The level of gang violence appears to be on the rise again; certainly gang membership is. </p>
<p>Frankly, though, this doesn’t seem to affect the “safety” ratings of Columbia, as measured by that website. Columbia is actually safer than Cornell, for instance.</p>
<p>Harlem used to be part of my sales territory 25 years ago. Bed-Stuy, too. Yes, it is undergoing gentrification. But it’s a big neighborhood, and as 2incollege says, not without lingering problems.</p>
<p>2incollege, it might take a “forensic statistician” combined with an urban planner to untangle all this, but I’m just wondering:</p>
<p>First, for those from a distance, so you can compare to your own regions, imagine Columbia U in the urban neighborhood called “Morningside Heights” which “borders” (some say “is part of”) the neighborhood called Harlem, in Manhattan (NYC). Harlem is undergoing economic renaissance, and yet it’s often repeated across the country to college applicants, “Columbia’s in a bad neighborhood…” Central Harlem is also Harlem but a further distance from the University than Morningside Heights, and it sounds like much tougher there, too. </p>
<p>Cornell U is in a small, politically progressive rural town (Ithaca) in an upstate farm region of NY State. Ithaca College is in the same town. It’s “gorgeous.” (their motto; lots of gorges and waterfalls).</p>
<p>And yet, as 2incollege noticed, crime stats on Cornell’s website exceed Columbia’s. </p>
<p>I wonder, then: can the universities report their immediate neighborhood for crime stats? If so, Morningside Heights has less crime than Central Harlem.
At that point, you wonder–for the sake of a parent considering where to send their kid to school–if there’s a “bubble” or low-crime buffer neighborhood in the mile around a university, where students would live and walk, isn’t that enough to feel A-OK about sending any kid to places like UPenn, U of Chicago, Case-Western, USC (although I don’t know how California works)…instead of shunning them for “being in a bad neighborhood.”</p>
<p>Adding to this “bubble” effect – whenever I visit my S or his friends who now reside and work near Columbia U, I see patrol cars (Campus Security Police) and excellent street lighting all night. I mean, patrol cars constantly circling! Plus whatever else NYPD does to patrol the area. If a city applies police resources, plus the campus’ own security is heavy, that also bodes well for sending a kid to an urban school in or near a poverty neighborhood. </p>
<p>I also wonder if crime stats in police terms are “per capita” in which case anyplace in NY can sound low-crime because the pop is so dense (not “well, duh” dense but living close together and stacked high in apartments :)</p>
<p>That would make Cornell sound much worse; if the same 3 murders you know first-hand from Central Harlem are weighed against that rural community, at Cornell, 3 murders out of X-thousand people in the surrounding 5 miles sounds like plenty, compared to 5 miles surrounding Columbia, must have a million people.</p>
<p>I don’t know why it always makes me bristle when parents don’t want to “send their kids” to an urban school for fear of crime. I honestly <em>don’t</em> know why, but it always does. Maybe it’s because I’m a “city person” (despite my current address… oh the things we do for love 
). Maybe it’s because I just thinks it’s so nonsensical.</p>
<p>I mean, if we were to track back the recent horrors of violent crime on/near campuses, I’m not sure what the statistics would say. I do know that we witnessed horrific violent crime on the non-urban campus of Va. Tech in Blacksburg, Va.; a girl gone missing and found murdered in non-urban Vermont walking late at night in the area surrounding UVM… Those kids were no safer than some who were victims in more urban locales.</p>
<p>I just think you can’t protect your “child” from danger by avoiding inner-city campuses. And the question being so much more often raised about urban campuses (when mini seems to have settled the comparative question of safety by pointing out that the college campuses, themselves, have far worse stats than urban areas - no one has questioned his assertion)… well, it gets me back to the OP question as to whether, conscious or not, people seem to have a tendency to equate “bad” neighborhood with “minority” neighborhood. Most may not mean to, but I think we need to face it. As many here have.</p>
<p>jmmom - I think you are so right and that’s why datdude has raised the question.</p>
<p>One of my daughters attended a more rural campus and one attends school in an urban area. I, too, bristle when someone asks whether I worry about her in that city. I didn’t get that question from people when D#1 went off to school in a seemingly bucolic setting. Frankly, I was more concerned that they both understand the dangers of drinking, leaving parties with guys they hardly know, etc., etc. </p>
<p>Anyway, as I said in an earlier post and you may have alluded to, I want to make sure that I don’t slip into making the bad/minority association. Rather than probing statistics or whatever, I will just try to be more aware of my own reaction and when someone inquires about my urban daughter’s safety, ask just why they would think she was in danger.</p>
<p>On a side issue, one thing I have thought about in the past two years is the challenge of changing distressed neighborhoods. It’s great to support business ventures, but I do have some fears that with the scope of eminent domain changing - what happens to the people who live in these neighborhoods if it is determined that new condos are in order? Oh, it would certainly look nicer and perhaps the crime rate in that particular area would improve, but what would happen to those people?</p>
<p>I guess for me what is most troubling is that the gap between the haves and the have nots continues to widen, and I think if we are really concerned with safety we had better start thinking about what we can do to make sure everyone can find employment that provides a liveable wage. </p>
<p>One of the reasons D#2 chose a more urban setting is that she did not want to attend school in a complete bubble. She recognizes that while we are certainly not wealthy, she is privileged. If she ever forgets, she will be reminded as she leaves campus.</p>
<p>Adding to this “bubble” effect – whenever I visit my S or his friends who now reside and work near Columbia U, I see patrol cars (Campus Security Police) and excellent street lighting all night. I mean, patrol cars constantly circling! Plus whatever else NYPD does to patrol the area. If a city applies police resources, plus the campus’ own security is heavy, that also bodes well for sending a kid to an urban school in or near a poverty neighborhood.</p>
<p>I also wonder if crime stats in police terms are “per capita” in which case anyplace in NY can sound low-crime because the pop is so dense (not “well, duh” dense but living close together and stacked high in apartments</p>
<p>That would make Cornell sound much worse; if the same 3 murders you know first-hand from Central Harlem are weighed against that rural community, at Cornell, 3 murders out of X-thousand people in the surrounding 5 miles sounds like plenty, compared to 5 miles surrounding Columbia, must have a million people.<<</p>
<p>What Columbia also has in neighborhood security is that it is a company town: many of the apartment buildings in the neighborhood are owned by Columbia, filled with staff/faculty/students, and with doors manned by Columbia-paid doormen. That creates quit a safety buffer that I’ll bet is highly unusual when compared to other universities.</p>
<p>As for Central Harlem, it’s light years, it feels, from Morningside Heights. I’m sad to say that most of my students have never set foot on the Columbia campus and would be nervous to do so. Just to show how things can be reversed, I set up a campus tour once, and my students were afraid to go onto the campus because they thought that the “white people would hurt” them. Such stereotypes, all around.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yup, it reminds me of that great feeling of ‘security’ that I feel when I visit a country where you can see the military and police patrolling the streets with machine guns. Or while flying El AL, which is probably the safest airline in the world. Looking out the window from inside the plane and watching soldiers surrounding the airplane before take off “bodes very well” for sending someone with them.</p>
<p>Those “extra” safety measures are clearly an indication of the danger around. Aren’t they?. Paying3tuitions, your example may not be the best one attempting to decrease someone’s anxiety about safety.</p>
<p>I just read this whole thread and I’m not really sure where it is going… you started a thread to get confirmation on your belief that people equate a “bad neighborhood” with a “black neighborhood”. Anyone who holds the view that this is not true, you argue with. And, when people make completely valid points, you just dismiss them as not true. </p>
<p>To me, “advantaged” means person A (minority) with a weaker application gets into college instead of person B (white) with a stronger application. That means advantaged. As in, the minority with the weaker application application is at an advantage when compared side by side to a white application, because they don’t need the same qualifications.</p>
<p>aside: If Obama/Sharpton/etc is less qualified to be President than a white person, should you vote for him anyway? I hope you would not think this way.</p>
<p>Whether or not this is right is a whole different issue. And whether or not you think it makes up for other disadvantages is a whole different issue.</p>
<p>If you want to argue that socioeconomic aspects are reasons that some people (not necessarily minorities) have lower stats, I would agree with you. If you want to argue that blacks have weaker stats because they weren’t given the same opportunities because they were black, I would disagree completely. They weren’t given the same opportunities because they were not as well off, not because of their race. A black kid who has 2 doctors for parents shouldn’t be at an advantage of a white kid who has 2 parents who work at Target. Socioeconomic reasons, not racial reasons. And yes, there is a difference.</p>
<p>“Plus, my view on bad neighborhoods extends to those neighborhoods like Howard Beach (NY), those in Forsythe County in Georgia and anywhere else where people harbor resentment towards others simply on the basis of the color of their skin.”</p>
<p>Fair enough. But doesn’t this mean that there may be some black neighborhoods that might be dangerous for white persons to enter for similar reasons?</p>
<p>responding to reports that I see so many circling police cars around the neighborhoods of Columbia U:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nah. It’s my pragmatic philosophy showing. I’d always rather be with a university that addresses its problems than denies them.</p>
<p>2incollege added that Columbia U’s ownership of surrounding buildings (office, apartments…) also helps create a safety “bubble” around the university itself.</p>
<p>Until recent years, the University of Chicago undergraduate population was heavily male. Ten or twelve years ago, when applications from women started to rise, someone in the PR department was quoted as saying “See, women aren’t afraid of coming here”.
The University used to regularly trumpet the fact that it had “the second largest police force in Illinois”.
Happily, today the U of C mouthpieces aren’t so ham handed and don’t need to be. The neighborhood is as safe as I’ve ever seen it. And half of undergrads are women.</p>
<p>I sense a “Bad” or “Unsafe” neighborhood when I see a lot of youth loitering around the streets, especially if they are behaving in a ‘rowdy’ manner. While unfortunately it is true that most such neighborhoods have a high proportion of blacks, not all ‘black’ neighborhoods are like that. </p>
<p>There are some neighborhoods in New York where everyone is black but I feel totally safe at all hours (e.g., some parts of Harlem). Some other neighborhoods (in downtown) have no specific dominant race but I feel very unsafe.</p>
<p>Those who make generalizations like “black=bad, white=safe” do so at their own peril.</p>
<p>You got to be kidding me with the U of Chicago isn’t in a bad neighborhood stuff. I visited there a couple of years ago and was asking two transit cops how to get there and which stop to get off. They told me where to get off the train and to take the bus from there. It was only a few blocks and a nice day and I told them we would walk. They told me under no circumctances should we try to walk. It wasn’t safe.</p>
<p>I thought they were exaggerating figuring they pegged mr for some Wisconsin rube. I have lived and worked in some pretty rough neighborhoods, the kind where people get robbed in the parking lot, crack houses across the street, and its not uncommon to see them drawing a chalk line around some guys body. Mostly things look worse than they really are unless you are selling drugs or run in to some addict who needs monet bad but I was actually a little unnerved by the time we got to the school. Parts of the South Side of Chicago and Gary, Indianaare the most blighted urban areas I have seen in America.</p>
<p>U Chicago is bordered on the west and the South by a couple of really wide boulevards and you really don’t want to hang out on the wrong side of them because there are some pretty desperate people on the other side.</p>
<p>Higherlead, I spent six years commuting down to Hyde Park up until a year ago for my master’s degree and can say with experience that it’s possible to be very safe at U of C. The area the officers were referring to, I think from your description, was the area east of campus over to the Dan Ryan Expressway where you probably got the El. If you had taken a different El line that is closer to the lake, and walked from there, you would have been completely safe. You are basically in an urban setting in Hyde Park, with all the risks that come with any urban setting. You also have to understand that perhaps the ‘desperate’ people you may have seen, were indigent patients going to the U of C Hospital, which is a top notch facility. I know many faculty members live in Hyde Park, so it can’t be that bad… either that, or they’re all stupid for living there. In fact, many areas of Hyde Park/around U of C are prohibitively expensive.</p>
<p>When you travel further south from U of C/Hyde Park, it does become a more poverty-stricken area, and Gary is a very depressed area, but Gary is 30 south of U of C. Go 30 minutes north of U of C and you’re in one of the most desired and most expensive areas of the country.</p>
<p>There were plenty of times I had night classes, and would walk out to my car (usually parked on the streets) either part-way with someone, or by myself. I used street smarts, and felt relatively safe.</p>
<p>Yes I traveled aound Chicao and environs quite a bit and Hyde park is fine and you can take the El line closer to the lake. The major roads around the campus serve to cut it off like a wall from sketchier areas but I’ve lived in the parts of cities where wealth abuts poverty and they are usually the most dangerous for street crime. My guess is nobody ever travels east from campus at night.</p>
<p>I am guessing the campus itself is safe enough and Hyde Park is certainly a wealthy enclave but it and UC are basically an island. Those major boulevards to the east and south might as well be the Korean DMZ or the Berlin Wall.</p>
<p>well, there really is no reason to travel east from campus at night because there’s nothing there that would interest a college student.</p>
<p>higherlead, if you took the Green Line and walked to campus you did indeed see “urban life”! I would never do that, and I’ve been here the last 15 years. That’s about a mile from campus.
Some of the most expensive real estate in Hyde Park is to the east. That’s the lakefront.
I live in University housing in a high income part of Hyde Park. I’ve seen many students, mostly graduate students, come and go. They are nervous when they arrive and I have to say don’t relax much while they are here. I don’t know how much this is due to unfamiliarity with city living or, more likely, lack of experience being around African-Americans. I would say most white students are like that, and Asians or Asian-Americans seem even more uncomfortable.
I wish this weren’t so because I think the neighborhood is, by and large, safe. But I would say when it comes to the general area, people are either too rich or too poor.</p>