<p>In my impression from visiting many times, Yale is a much smaller and more tight-knit community than most colleges, not to mention one of the two best universities in the world according to the THES. That’s the only reason why these stories become big news. </p>
<p>It’s very different elsewhere. I was talking earlier this year with someone who has worked and lived at Columbia for the past 20 years, and she had never heard about the grad student who was killed in a mugging right by the campus last year.</p>
<p>The fact that Yale is close-knit is a huge positive: people care about each other, professors have students over for dinner, that sort of thing. It means that even if there is a minor crime issue, the entire community of 10,000 people will hear about it and be talking about it within a few minutes of the crime report.</p>
<p>Bottom line is that if you’re worried about safety issues, don’t go to a campus where you might be tempted to drive (like Dartmouth or Cornell), and if you go to any campus, be careful crossing the streets. Auto crashes kill about 2,000 to 4,000 college students each year, whereas homicides kill about 20.</p>