But according to Reader's Digest I'm pretty safe -- Northeastern ranked second on their list of safest universities in the country.
Reader's Digest asked 291 colleges and universities in the country to "participate in a survey to see how well prepared they were to handle various safety and security issues. 135 agreed."
The survey looked at several safety issues including residence hall security, whether students must show ID to enter the library and the number of full-time university police.
According to Reader's Digest:
We realize that each campus is different and that its security needs are unique. Therefore, we believe it is fairer to say that certain schools are excelling in the safety arena; others are doing a good job, and some would benefit by putting more resources into campus safety and security.The Northeastern News* ran this story Thursday about Residence Hall safety. When I first lived on-campus, I found signing in guests to be a big pain but now I realize it is important. In addition, students are not allowed to have more than three people in their room at one time and students are 100 percent responsible for their guests.
But there are loopholes in some of Northeastern's safety procedures.
For example, students do have to show ID to get into the library but they just wave their ID and keep on walking. It's pretty easy to flash someone else’s ID, especially when the library is busy.
Maybe it's details like this that made Northeastern not fair too well in another survey.
Reader's Digest also compiled crime data for 285 universities from 2004 and 2005. They then put universities in either a "lower," "moderate" or "higher" category.
Northeastern received a ranking of 101, putting them in the moderate crime category. For a city campus I guess this isn't too bad. A large chunk of the crimes were burglaries, and there were no murders.
In general, I do feel safe on-campus.
I can't help but wonder though whether these safety procedures are enough to protect a tragedy as big as Northern Illinois or Virginia Tech.
*I am a former managing editor of The Northeastern News.
2 comments:
Did they include surrounding areas or just NEU campus? Because technically Ruggles doesn't count as campus and that place scares the crap out of me.
I could easily drive to Oak Grove and then take the Orange Line to Northeastern. I don't because relying on Ruggles Station three or four days a week is just too risky, given that there are several shootings each year. It's too bad, because it's a nice facility in many ways.
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