Local Schools Top Unsafe List; Emerson Finally #1 in Something

#4, Tufts University
10 aggravated assaults and 5 robberies in 2 years

Highlighting the essential arbitrariness of its study, the Beast first blames Tufts' high ranking on the "working-class neighborhoods" around the Medford campus, but then reveals that the med school's Boston campus was also included in the stats. So, uh, is it Medford or Boston that's the problem? And if 15 incidents in two years are enough to make a school rank #4, the rest of the country must be phenomenally safe.

#5, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"one of the highest incidents of burglary in the country in 2007"

The Beast gives the MIT Crime Club some love in its writeup on the techies, while a commenter opines that "Unless scuba divers are raiding the school MIT is the safest place to be especially since they have bright lights and heavy security everywhere."

#11, Fitchburg State

Burglary is the main crime at Fitchburg State, which has established a safety desk that makes use of student interns. Most crimes here occur on campus instead of off.

#17, Springfield College

Once again bucking the "bad area" trend, most crimes at Springfield "occurred on campus, not around it."

#20, Harvard University
among the top 25 in rape, near the top in local crimes

Harvard brings us back to the location problem: the surrounding areas of Cambridge are full of robberies, assaults, and vehicular thefts. Regarding the rape statistic, the Beast acknowledges that Harvard "is particularly good at getting students to report date and acquaintance rape, and therefore may actually reflect campus safety instead of danger." Inconsistent much?

In the end, the Beast's data may have been good, but the methodology seems flawed, and—most distressingly—results of the study don't point to any meaningful conclusions about school safety. Is it bad to be located in a dangerous neighborhood? Well, probably. But sometimes it's unavoidable. And does the Beast study tell us what schools or students should do about a bad location? No, and as such it's pretty meaningless. Raising the "unsafe" specter is sensationalistic and does little to guarantee anyone's safety. It would have been better to propose solutions, such as schools working together with communities to combat crime, or ways for students to keep themselves safe. Instead, the article just gives certain schools an undeserved bad name.

We're currently looking at campus stats from the department of education to see if they tell us something more than "Emerson is dangerous." So far a quick glance at data from 2006 and 2007 has shown over 200 on-campus robberies at Harvard and MIT, and less than 10 on campus at Emerson. We'll let you know if we find other interesting information.