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If Emerson gave Tina Brown an award, would she be too scared to pick it up?
By adamg on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 2:51pm
Brown's HuffPo wanna-be site ranks Emerson the most dangerous campus in America because it's next to the scary Boston Common and two demonspawn Green Line stations.
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Comments
Massachusetts schools did
Massachusetts schools did not fair well on this list at all. I am guessing it is because A) We have so many schools on the national radar and B) Most of the schools are in urban areas.
Tufts
MIT
Harvard
Emerson
Springfield
Fitchburg State were all on the list (I may have missed others)
What I saw missing from the list were Suffolk and BU. Suffolk is in the same situation as Emerson yet is missing from the list. BU is so huge and sprawling it is a wonder they do not garner more crimes in their loop. Also Northeastern seems to have missed the list, which either means it was over looked or the area it is in has a bad rap without numbers to back it up.
The article reads differently
As I read it, it sounds more like the website is being apologetic for which crime statistics used to rank the schools because of something like Emerson's situation.
It looks like they were just taking the 2007 crime reports from all of the schools and comparing them and Emerson's were the highest. Then they realized that the reason is that most of the crimes on the Emerson list weren't on its "campus" but on the nearby city streets which have to be included in the report (due to proximity?). The first half of Emerson's description sounds more apologetic than damning. The second half then says "well, they *do* have to live near the crime though" as a half-hearted attempt to justify why they'd still use this ranking system for their own article.
I don't know. It doesn't sound like they really believe their own report but didn't know how else to justify the answer it gave as opposed to calling Emerson the scariest campus on Earth or anything.
Funny aside: A few years ago, I was giving my brother and sister-in-law came up from Baltimore to visit. I gave them a quick drive around town to point out some of the historical highlights since they weren't able to stay long. We got to the corner of Boylston and Tremont and I mentioned about the time a guy almost mugged me for cash (my friends walking a short distance behind me scared him off) and how we were in one of the worst crime areas downtown.
My brother looked out the car window and pointed out a young single woman walking towards the Boylston T stop with a doggy bag from a nearby restaurant and dead panned, "Wow. I can see what you mean. Really scary here."
Looks like a case of
Looks like a case of bordering statistic not directly aligning with how safe a campus really is.
I am really surprised at the omission of several large universities in other parts of the country which are surrounded by high crime areas, yet not included on this list.
I would
Hell yeah I wouldn't go anywhere on the Emerson campus that involved getting into one of their elevators!!!
True...
I went to Emerson and was once stuck for an hour and a half. Got stuck other times, too.
It is a wonder we Bostonians
It is a wonder we Bostonians are not in better shape. 90 percent of our elevators are death traps although 50 percent of our stairwells are scary as hell too!
But wait, there's more...
Harvard, Tufts, and MIT also make the list. Apparently Tufts is surrounded by "working class neighborhoods," prompting me to consider whether the site used crime stats from 2008 or 1908.
Tufts and MIT are #4 and #5? Ridiculous
Sure there's crime around MIT and Tufts, but nothing that would deserve placing either one so high on this list.
Some universities in high-crime areas that I *didn't* see on the list: Columbia, U of Chicago, U of Southern California (USC). Hard for me to imagine that serene Brown University is more dangerous than these.
Yeah, I didn't see Case
Yeah, I didn't see Case Western Reserve, in Cleveland or Temple University in Philidephia, both campuses I spent some time on and found the surrounding neighborhoods far more shocking than than anything MIT, Emerson, or Harvard throw at students.
temple
Having lived in philly, there's nothing here that compares to Temple in terms of danger. My sister went to Temple and while on the phone I heard a noise. She replied something like "Oh that's just gunshots. We hear them all the time but the dorm windows are bulletproof." Putting Tufts on the list sounds insane. Davis Sq is a dangerous place...
I agree
I've spent a lot of time in Philly and Temple was the first place I thought of in terms of danger as well, and the fact that they're not on the list is really surprising. One reason could be that the stats are based on per student crime ratios and Temple has over 36,000 while Emerson has 1/10 of that.
I think Tufts is on there because of the Medical School campus, which is right next to Emerson. But they have more students so it's not as bad.
I wonder if it has something to do with Massachusetts having more stringent crime reporting requirements. They say that's the case with Maryland on the list, and the fact that MA and MD take up a good chunk of the top 25 leads me to believe that could be the case.
Is it a crime to...
...smoke butts in front of the Dunkies?
Perhaps the movie theater stabbings figure into the mix?
University of Chicago? Columbia?
Chicago and Columbia are usually near the top of such lists since they are located at the edges of the South Side and Harlem, respectively.
Universitu of Chicago....
...in in the _middle_ of the South Side.
We're Number 1!
Finally something to cheer about?
Tufts
As a Tufts alum, I take pride that in at least one sense Harvard is more of a "safety school"
Emerson, the most dangerous
Emerson, the most dangerous campus in America?? Seriously?!? Might Northeastern's oh-so-serene Roxbury setting count as a "working-class neighborhood"?