<p>The fact remains that Baltimore has the highest murder and robbery rates in the Nation…Baltimore is the way New York was a decade ago. Very very dangerous at night time.</p>
<p>Rest assured if you stray far off campus and you didn’t grow up in the inner city than your going to get a wake up call. I’m telling you, I went to high school in Brooklyn and I know what its like coming off that train at 3 AM when every type of thug, hustlery and fiend imaginable is prowling the streets. And that was probally one of the safter neighborhoods in the burough!</p>
<p>If your weak in any way at all, your going to have problems with these people I can guarentee it. It shouldn’t divert you from applying it you really want to be there, but it is certainly something I would want to consider as a parent before I send my 18 year old suburban upper-middle class teenager into an environment where he or she doesn’t know how to cope with.</p>
<p>No, Camden is just “the most dangerous”…really this is pointless, Baltimore and DC are both extremely dangerous, comparatively moreso than New York or Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Both are in the top 10 as far as murder is concerned</p>
<p>illmaticmindstate, just so we know how to frame your responses, what time have you spent in Baltimore, and specifically the area of the Homewood campus?</p>
<p>hey,
student from JHU here. to clarify: 2 murders and 1 suicide in the space of 9 months, and i think maybe 2 rapes in about that amount of time too. (all of these took place in the victims’ rooms). baltimore’s been having…very bad luck this year so far in terms of its murder rate (something like a murder per day). inner harbor is nice, but inner harbor is some distance away from campus - a lot of pre-frosh go to inner harbor when they visit JHU and think “oh, this is nice! life at JHU does have perks like these!” but going to inner harbor is more of an…occasional trip rather than a convenient getaway. things aren’t very safe around here, but we hope they will change, since the school has recently announced that it’s going to spend $2 million on security.
the thing that bugs me, personally, is that the school only announced this when
2 students were murdered, plus some assaults on and off campus (in addition to the usual theft, robbery, etc)
the latest murder was given a lot of media coverage, and the press began to publish articles with the questions “is Hopkins safe? students interviewed there say it isn’t” that sort of thing.
some students tried to organise a protest against the lack of security at our school, announcing that to the press the day before the protest was to take place. the press in turn announced to the public (over television, i think) that a protest was going to happen the next day, and there was to be media coverage at the actual protest itself. about 5 hours before the protest was due to begin, president brody sent out a mass email to everyone announcing the decision to invest $2 million in security. so it sort of…pre-emptively countered the protest.
this all makes one wonder: if the school was able to come up with such a detailed security plan and that amount of money in such a short amount of time after the 2nd murder, why only now? why didn’t the school do this BEFORE so many people were hurt (and, for 2, killed) ? some think that the school did this partly to restore its reputation in the eyes of the press. students have been clamouring for tighter security for years, but on a relative scale, nothing much has been done until now. this is pretty much the first decisive, well-moneyed security plan we’ve had in recent history, i think. </p>
<p>also, the stuff about off-campus housing and how 2 of the murders took place off-campus - the school kicks you off campus after two years. all upperclassmen (and some lowerclassmen too) HAVE to live off-campus, because the school doesn’t have enough housing for us. the school recently announced that it would be able to provide 600 new beds upon completion of the new housing building/complex. however, the number of students that need housing is about 2,000 not 600.<br>
so, yeah. just to clarify some things here. sorry if i sound too biased! i tried to be objective.</p>
<p>I think you succeeded. Thanks for the insider view. I give the students a lot of credit for planning a protest that helped spur positive change. Now, you ask why didn’t the school allot the money beforehand but isn’t it just as valid to ask why didn’t the students launch a massive protest beforehand? Maybe they tried, I don’t know. Maybe they shouldn’t have to protest for better safety measures. Maybe they should be able to concentrate on school and not have to worry about safety. </p>
<p>The media is a powerful force but unfortunately it seems that the more newsworthy an issue is, the more changeworthy it is. </p>
<p>My heart goes out to all the families of victims.</p>
<p>I lived there for about a year and a half after I got out of high school and I’ll tell you its friggin dangerous there around that JHU campus.</p>
<p>I had some friends that went to school there and let me tell you that neighborhood surrounding the school is SHAAADY! My friend got his chain ripped right off his neck when he was walking around the campus, then another person I know got a bottle broken over his head in broad daylight…and these were students!</p>
<p>That whole area is screwed…its like plopping a top 25 school in the middle of the South Bronx or Compton or something, but the scary thing is, Baltimore has a higher murder/robbery/overall crime rate than both those places :(</p>
<p>Actually, the area right off one side of the campus is pretty nice. A couple of blocks down the street houses can go for over $1 million. I lived about five blocks from Hopkins when I was younger and the only real crime my family ever experienced was the frequent theft of our lawn chairs. The other side of the campus is not as safe. While its not the type of area you necessarily want to be out alone in after dark, as long as you stay alert and keep with others there really isn’t much danger.</p>
<p>While I will admit that Baltimore is a dangerous place, comparing it to South Bronx of Compton seems a bit off. I don’t know much about the geography of these areas, but they are really only sections of a larger metropolis. For example, you may say LA is dangerous, but most of the danger is in Compton. In the same way, you may say that Baltimore is dangerous, but in reality a large part of Baltimore City is very safe. Hopkins is not in the inner city.</p>
<p>You are wrong. Statistically Baltimore is more dangerous than both NYC and Los Angeles…I’ll repeat this again. Baltimore had 355 murders last year out of a population of 600,000. New York had 597 out of a population of 8,000,000…those numbers should be sobbering and should shatter your wet dreams of Baltimore being a safe place to live.</p>
<p>Alot of places in Baltimore are every bit as dangerous, probally moreso, than Compton or the South Bronx</p>
<p>i think there is some exaggeration going on here. look, before i applied, I talked to 6 alums, 4 undergrad and 2 med. NONE had ever been mugged, raped, whatever. NOTHING. They all said they had heard of things happening, but not at a frequency which some make it seem. </p>
<p>statistics are great. i love math. but in alot of cases you cant apply it. for instance, illmaticmindstate: how many of those 355 happened within a mile of the hopkins campus? how many happened to hopkins students? how many happened to professors? faculty? anyone with any connection to hopkins? </p>
<p>Im not trying to say that baltimore isn’t dangerous, because it is. but, i think if you exercise some common sense, and stay away from the guys with the ski masks on…i think you’ll be alright.</p>
<p>haha this is ridiculous. illmaticmindstate your exaggerations are cracking me up.</p>
<p>you make going to auschwitz sound better than going to hopkins. and you never answered my question about having a personal vendetta against the baltimore area.</p>
<p>recently, a forum was also set up for students/parents/faculty/staff to discuss security, in light of what has been happening lately: <a href=“http://remembering.jhu.edu%5B/url%5D”>http://remembering.jhu.edu</a></p>
<p>Its not as bad as it seems. Fact of the matter is Linda was killed by someone she knew which could happen to anyone in any college and has happened before. The Elser crime could have been prevented had they simply locked the door. During the summer, the frat house he lived in was broken into numerous times but the frat never bothered to get an alarm system installed. As for Dominic, this university has counseling services available which he sadly (based on records) never took advantage of. Also both murders occured off campus albeit near campus (I dont consider frats on campus as they are rather isolated houses). The frat house is a good couple blocks away from homewood and could have easily been prevented from crime had the frat taken heed from past incidents. Honestly, use common sense and you will be fine.</p>
<p>i did post the homewood link in another thread. but i still think everyone is exaggerating. illmaticmindstate is making it seem as if EVERYONE gets mugged, raped or killed during their four years at hopkins. that is obviously not the case and I wanted to clarify.</p>