More ‘Most Dangerous Schools’ Lists Are Making the Rounds
Lists like these could actually make colleges and universities less safe.
In my normal daily search for news on the Internet, I’ve come across a couple more articles claiming to list the most “dangerous” institutions of higher education in America.
As I’ve said before, lists like these could actually make colleges and universities less safe because they punish the schools that are working hard to encourage the accurate reporting of crime in their communities. In many cases, institutions with higher rates of reported incidents are safer than the campuses that lull potential students into a false sense of security with low crime numbers that don’t represent reality.
Because lists like these do so much damage, I’m not going to link to the articles featuring them and reward their publishers for bad behavior. That said, I want to call your attention to the article I wrote in response to a previous attempt by a different news organization to name the “25 Most Dangerous Colleges in America.” You can read it here.
Hopefully, this will remind potential students, their parents and the public in general to ignore articles that rely only on statistics and don’t take into account the realities of law enforcement, campus culture and crime data.
Instead, I encourage everyone to review another article we’ve run called Want to Attend a Safe College? 10 Questions To Ask Before You Commit when attempting to gauge a college’s level of safety and security.
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- Clery Act & HEOA Compliance Guidance
- Dept. of Ed Issues New Gender-Based Violence ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter
- How to Comply With the Dept. of Ed’s Title IX Sexual Violence Guidance
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About the Author
Robin Hattersley, Editor-in-Chief
Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.
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