Defunding UCPD is never going to happen. The University Administration since President Sonnenschein has been making a tremendous effort to make the U of C/Hyde Park/Kenwood/North Woodlawn neighborhoods much safer and undergrads friendly. Literally billions of dollars have been poured into the remake of campus. I believe the Board of Trustee and President Zimmer are 100% behind maintaining and even tightening the security of the University neighborhoods. They are not going to risk billions of dollars of investment on a social experiment that no one in the upper echelon of U of C believes in.
There are always people who cannot even tell the differences between Englewood and Hyde Park or South Side and the Loop for that matter. To all the parents of incoming 1st year I would like to offer reassurance that crime rate in Hyde Park/Kenwood/North Woodlawn this summer has not been that much different than past years. In other words, Hyde Park is about as safe as the tonier neighborhoods in North Side like Lincoln Park and Lake View. And usually crime rate drops once school starts because of the abundance of students on campus and then UCPD steps up patrolling.