Student safety

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Have any of you been reading about the issue of student safety recently? There was a very hostile article on the topic in The Chronicle on Friday. The comments posted are as interesting as the article itself. Several robberies or near robberies plus the murder of a graduate student have added to students' concerns already being voiced. This article from the N&O reports a review underway.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/story/893275.html

[Vincetaylor]

Especially the area between East Campus and Northgate. Hopefully, the university is doing a good job teaching students which areas to avoid, especially when choosing off-campus housing. The murder of the grad student is a tragedy. Unfortunately, it is not getting the attention it deserves in the local media.

[CarrotTD]

It's not just the area near East campus - there's been a lot of crime recently in the area just South of West Campus:

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2330621/

I think this is something that the Duke administration really needs to take a look at and devote resources to. Can Duke fix all of Durham's crime problems? Certainly not. But something must be done to convince students, parents, and staff that their safety concerns are being addressed.

As for actual solutions, I'm no expert, but the mentioned increase in patrols is a fine place to start. Anyone have any bright ideas?

[tecumseh]

For years crime on college campuses was grossly underreported for fear by the college administrators that honest reporting would scare students away. Unfortunately it took a tragedy and some bulldog parents to change the way colleges report crimes. http://www.securityoncampus.org/schools/cleryact/index.html

A very similar episode happened in University of Chicago and LSU recently.
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2007/11/20/graduate-student-murdered/
http://www.ktbs.com/news/LSU-graduate-students-murdered-during-home-invasion-7166/

[tecumseh]

There was a thread a while back on how safe or unsafe Duke is http://www.duke.edu/web/police/cleryreport/Crime_Statistics2004-2006.pdf. But researching the subject I was somewhat surprised that in recent years University of Maryland http://www.umpd.umd.edu/brochure/CRIME.htmand Chapel Hill have rated as two of the more dangerous campuses in the land but I could not access the Clery Act data from the UNC website (I may be just dumb or this may be a violation) it is supposed to be readily available like Duke's and Marylands.