Campus Safety

With the tragedy at Virginia Tech still fresh, a discussion of campus safety seems appropriate. Although nothing can totally prevent the type of tragedy that occurred, students should consider the issue of safety when examining the colleges where they may be spending the next 4 years.

All colleges are required by law to report certain standard information about crime on and near their campuses. Here are some websites to review how safe your college choices are.

The US Department of Educations publishes campus security statistics which can be accessed by different criteria.

Security on Campus is a non profit organization that also tracks crimes on college campuses.

Although these web sites provide information about safety on and near campuses, there are some things to keep in mind. First, not all colleges report data in the same way particularly for less serious crimes such as underage drinking. At some colleges, this is considered an internal issue and not reported as a crime. Second, the fact that a campus is reporting crimes is not necessarily a bad thing. It may be that the campus is strict in its enforcement of criminal activity and as a result reports a higher crime rate than another campus that is less strict. If you see reported criminal activity that is a concern, you should talk to safety personal at the college in question as well as students and others on that campus to get their input on the perceived safety of the campus. On the other hand, if the campus reports virtually no criminal activity, you will also want to ask questions. No place is free of all crime and any college that so indicates may be covering up serious issues. Again, asking lots of questions is the best thing you can do to get the information needed to make the choice of which college to attend.