Campuses across the nation are targets for crime. They’re full of vulnerable, sleep-deprived students, which makes for the perfect victims. Even the safest campuses likely have reports of assault or robbery on their records.
The entire college period is a stressful time in young people’s lives. From exams and impossible essay deadlines to a never-ending list of social obligations, staying on top of everything can quickly become a battle. When prioritizing things in our lives, our mental health is often the first to take a hit.
There’s more to think about when it comes to your well-being in college than just your mental health and the recent hits its taken. Like it or not, crime is out there.
Campus Crime
Sure, we’d all love to say that our university has bullet-proof safety precautions and it would ‘never happen here’, but in reality, we have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. A recent study looked at campus safety nationwide using data from the National Center for Education Statistics. From small, elite private schools such as Yale University to large public schools such as Michigan State University, there’s a wide array of college campuses among the most unsafe colleges in the nation. It’s time to stop living by the model of wishful thinking and start rewriting the narrative.
The top of the list for the most crime on campus is the University of New Mexico with over 900 offenses since 2013. This includes reports of aggravated assault, robbery and burglary, and violence against women.
Violence against women is a conversation of its own. The college culture is notorious for its strong association with rape. Dozens of schools have upwards of 100 reports of violence against women since 2013 – though this is a complicated subject given that there are likely significantly more incidents that went unreported.
On the bright side, this study also found five universities with an impressive zero reports of crime since 2013. This high accomplishment belongs to Inter American University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United Talmudical Seminary, Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel, and Clarkson College. A few other universities made the list with five or fewer reports of crime.
On the other hand, any other university not on that list has had at least one or more crimes in their recent history. That means the universities that you know and love, the ones where you have friends and families studying at, have some history of criminals on campus. Even if their stats are lower than the national average, one crime is still one too many.
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to worry about how to combat these horrific crimes, and students could focus solely on their studies. But the reality is, crime is out there and ultimately inevitable.
Students should know their risks and take preventative measures however possible. From the obvious like never walking alone at night to the more obscure like checking your location privacy settings on social media, there are countless ways you can take control of your own well-being.
When Crime Comes Calling
These statistics aren’t meant to scare people, they simply emphasize a call to action. As college students, we need to take matters of personal safety into our own hands. College is hard enough as is, there’s no need for crime to further interrupt the process.