Violence in Chicago

anon43256521
Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:55:10 +0000

I have no idea how to research it, but I would be surprised if in the entire history of the University of Chicago as many students were seriously injured in the campus area as were killed or wounded at Virginia Tech last year.



Perhaps he was looking at the question in a general (non-UC-specific) stance, in which case it’s very fair to say that random violence (like car accidents and drug overdoses) kills more college students than campus shootings.

At UC, the odds of either happening are astronomical. However, the prevalence of both gang activity and available guns on the South Side means that, if I have to rank, I’m going to put “hit by a stray bullet” over “deranged campus shooting.” People do kill each other in the neighborhood - last month there was a gang shooting so close that people in apartments could hear the shots, in mid-afternoon - and so if I was putting morbid odds on what was more likely to end my life, I’d pick that.

But like I said, I’m about 400 times more worried about my analysis midterm than any sort of violence happening on campus, which I think was JHS’s issue in the first place (random violence occurring in “far higher numbers”).