Where does he want to live when he leaves school? If Texas is a key endgame, Southwestern would really shine to me because Georgetown TX is much safer than Memphis and Southwestern is well regarded there and mostly known only there (btw Rhodes is at least as well regarded in Texas if not more from what my professional friends there tell me). A good friend of mine went to Southwestern and he has been very successful; he loved his experience and the academics and attention. If your S wants to be in the South more generally or elsewhere nationally, Rhodes has an excellent academic reputation across the South and nationally has become a back-up for some of the top tier LAC crowd (especially for the pre-med and pre-law crowds because it is respected by the professional schools; see eg Amy Cohen Barrett, who then went on to Notre Dame Law); we met the relatively new President while visiting and she is fantastic. I was not bothered by Memphis (but I lived seven years in New Haven) and I (alone) still second guess whether S should have considered it more; but Memphis killed the deal for my wife and S (and I didn’t want to hear about it for the rest of my life) for a school that we otherwise all loved and thought would be a great fit academically and socially/sports and where S was a top recruited athlete. Comparing Memphis to Baltimore and New Haven is not particularly persuasive, objectively, and Memphis’ stats and recent events are probably worse than those two cities. Berry is just a whole different ballgame as described by others already; no comparison.
For the reasons stated, I would go with Rhodes, unless your S is set on living in Texas forever, in which case I think Southwestern is a strong contender. I left Rhodes thinking I would love to go there myself, even if I had to be mindful of the public safety issues in the city; this is not something that happened elsewhere for me in the second tier LAC universe on which we were focusing.