How Safe is the Campus of University of Illinois?

I still remember the last sentence my parents said to me when I was about to board the airplane which leaves China for America: “take care of yourself and be safe.” However, the experience of taking a campus bus for the first time was not safe at all. As a new, international student, I arrived on campus one week earlier before class started, so there are actually very few people on the bus heading to the marketplace around 2 pm when I got on. After I sat down, a black woman moved from her original seat to my left seat. A couple of minutes passed by, she started talking to me, asking me where I was going, and I told her I was going to Best Buy. Then she enthusiastically told me I should get off the bus after two more stops, which makes me think she is really friendly and nice. After chatting with each other for a few minutes, she suddenly approached to me and whispered: “do you think you can help me with a couple of dollars?” I was scared and terrified. Fortunately that was when my stop arrived, so I ran off the bus feeling like I was about to be robbed and hit by that black woman. I have never experienced this kind of “borrowing” of money before, and that is why this event left me with such a deep impression. That is when the question “how safe is the campus?” raised to my mind for the first time.

As I am worried about the campus safety, The Office of the Chief of Police sent an email which concerns about an aggravated robbery through crime alert system to my university email address. Along with this email there are two links for the crime videos captured by one of the security cameras. It was a bright afternoon on October 10, 2011 at approximately 4:19 pm, the victim was sitting at a table in front of the The Espresso Royale ...

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...ovisional conclusion I made, some new questions emerged which I have yet to answer. For example, how many crimes have been committed on campus within a year? Are victims most university students? What is the percentage of the criminal arrestation? Did the University permit students to possess guns?

Works Cited

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=BH8I-aTfiDM, found on Oct 11th, 2011 through email sent by The Office of the Chief of Police.

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H6BgWecVWE, found on Oct 11th, 2011 through email sent by The Office of the Chief of Police.

3. http://dps.illinois.edu/universitypolice/crimeprevention.html, found on Oct 22nd, 2011 on the official website of The Division of Public Safety.

4 .http://dps.illinois.edu/universitypolice/personalsafetytips.html, found on Oct 23rd, 2011 on the official website of The Division of Public Safety.