[Vision2020] UI Ranks 36th Safest College Out of 458

[Saundra Lund]

Visionaries:

 

I read something in the Daily News (that I can't find now) where the UI
ranked 36th in the top 50 safest colleges (ISU came in at #7) according to
stats compiled by the Daily Beast, and there were two points I wanted to
make.

 

First, BSU didn't make the Safest List at all, so perhaps BSU's Bob Kustra
should be focusing his hot air on what he needs to do to make his college
safer (or figure out why student health insurance at BSU has to be so
expensive due to an extraordinarily high MLR) rather than ripping into the
UI & Moscow for being nasty, inebriated, and uncivil.

 

Second & more importantly, this data makes it all the more . . . curious why
the UI chose to spend Big Bucks hiring notorious AlliedBarton at a time when
the academic experience at the UI is suffering due to a lack of funding.  It
seems pretty clear to me that property safety -- rather than safety of the
people in the UI community -- is the explanation for the foolish decision to
reduce (read: cut) MPD's excellent service to the UI community & hire a
private security firm with a pretty troubled history on college campuses and
off.  And don't let the UI convince you otherwise.

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsmaker/college-safety-rankings

 

There's no such thing as a crime-free campus, but based on The Daily Beast's
rankings, these schools come very close.

 

For The Daily Beast's second-annual ranking of the safest and most dangerous
colleges in the U.S., we pored over the three most recent calendar years of
campus security and crime data (2006-2008) compiled by the U.S. Department
of Education, as well as the FBI and the Secret Service, in conjunction with
the Clery Act, the federal mandate requiring all schools that receive
federal funding to disclose crime information annually. The data reflect
incidents reported to campus or local police, not convictions.

 

Some ground rules: We only ranked colleges with residential facilities, as
well as at least 6,000 enrolled students, according to the National Center
for Education Statistics. We also deferred to the NCES in determining what a
"campus" is-for example, it groups the two campuses for Tufts University as
single entity, even though they are seven miles apart (Tufts' Boston campus
is the reason it ranked so poorly). This produced a total comparison of 458
schools across the country.

 

The statistics account for nine types of criminal incidents, which we
weighted based on a subjective judgment of violence, asserting that an
incident of murder represents a higher level of intrinsic threat to public
safety than a robbery. Burglary carried the lowest value, with car theft
weighed twice as much, assault or robbery six times, arson 10 times,
negligent manslaughter 20 times and murder 40 times. All totals were then
divided by the number of enrolled students, so that midsize and large
campuses could be accurately compared.

__________

 

Saundra Lund

Moscow, ID

 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.

~ Edmund Burke

 

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2010 through life plus
70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside
the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the
author.*****

 

 

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