Campus Crime: City Influenced or Student Provoked

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Campus Crime: City Influenced or Student Provoked

For most students, college is a time of learning and growth, with the occasional partying, and mistakes made here and there. However, in recent years, life on college campuses has taken a drastic turn. In addition to worrying about passing classes, students are also worrying about what their fate will be if they make the wrong decision and turn down the wrong corner.

As home to over 250 college campuses, Boston is a breeding ground for young kids experiencing their first taste of freedom. Because it is a big city, living in Boston poses more threat than living in the suburbs. Students have to worry about more than where they parked their cars and taking cabs home by themselves. Shockingly, some of the students themselves are more of a threat than the panhandlers standing outside the local Burger King and the ever-present strangers in the city roaming the streets after dark.

In the past three years of this reporter’s attendance at Northeastern, a student was shot and killed in his on-campus apartment and one student’s brother was killed and three others were injured by a hit and run that occurred on campus. Two close friends were jumped, and this reporter’s boyfriend was jumped twice in the past year, all on campus, or by students attending Northeastern.

In 1991, the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act was implemented and requires colleges to publish an annual log of the crime statistics that occurred on their campuses each year. This information is available at most Public Safety departments’ websites for nearly all college campuses.

Northeastern has taken the standard precautionary measures by requiring each student to carry a university identification card, of...

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...identified a 17-year-old student who indicated that he knew who the two juveniles were. The case is still being investigated by the Boston Police Department with NUPD's assistance.”

This along with countless other reports of theft and robbery are mentioned in what seems to be weekly in the NU crime log as well.

Whether it is a lack of security and effort on Northeastern’s part, or an immaturity and naivete of the studnets that attend the school, most would agree that the crime on this campus has become out of control in recent years. Students and members of the Northeastern community need to come together and figure out how to put an end to such crimes, for if they don’t the rate of which they occur will surely continue to rise.

For more information on crimes that occur on college campuses everywhere, those interested can access http://ope.edu.gov/security.

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