Lauren Kelling said...> "I am a student at Loyola University in Rogers Park and frankly, I do not think it is a safe place. My roommate at the beginning of the year was robbed at gunpoint, and I get an e-mail from campus safety at least once a week about a robbery, even group robberies.
I never go anywhere at night, especially by myself, I actually don't feel comfortable ever going out by myself. My friends feel the same way. It is not a safe place to be. I was told by the university that this was a safe neighborhood, I definitely feel so lied to, which is awful considering what the cost of tuition is to go to school there."
23 comments:
I learned long ago that colleges and universities will say anything to get prospective students to enroll and spend their (or their parents') money on tuition. But even if Loyola is not coming clean about the crime in the area, they usually pass out information about safety tips to the students.
The student may feel that they were tricked, but the truth is, all campuses are hotbeds for crime. Doesn't matter where they are located. Criminals regularly target campuses and prey on students, whom they believe to be naive and unsuspecting. Other students are sometimes guilty of committing criminal acts against their peers, as well.
bt-
perceived to be young, naive and rich.
Not all schools are so close-mouthed about crime in the general area and on the campus. I went to Illinois State U., and they were quite open about what students should watch for both on and off campus, and what crimes had occurred in the towns.
It basically sounds like Loyola is after the students mainly for their money.
I'm attending Loyola, and they send out an advisory at least once a week, giving students a "heads up" on the latest crimes against students.
In all fairness, the students of Northwestern University are targeted as well. There are hooligans up there that take advantage of the "perceived to be young, naive and rich" as well.
And let's not forget what recently happened near the U of C campus last week.
Frankly, I think all students should be given out a free can of pepper spray and one of those loud bull horn cans upon arrival at college campuses. Maybe if the thugs began to encounter pepper spray to the face and blown out eardrums, they'd think twice about robbing some kid.
Then again, maybe not.
welcome to the real world Lauren - thats coming from a Loyola upper-classman that appreciates what life is really like. The robberies are from people like you (yes, I'm stereotyping) being idiotic about your own safety
Northern Illinois University in DeKalb is under a security alert through the end of the semester after police found threats on a bathroom wall that included a racial slur, a university spokeswoman said Sunday.
Only essential service personnel should report to work on Monday," the statement read. University officials are going to meet to discuss how long the university will be closed and what they plan to do about final exams."
Talk about security measures.
Give me a break people!!
Didn't these parents not drive either North up Sheridan or South down Sheridan to take their first visit of the campus???
Short of being airlifted straight to Halas field, you cannot tell me one person with any brains (although these days at Loyola, who knows if this is a pre-requisite) anymore..)could not tell that Rogers Park is no Gold Coast.
Seriously, being 'tricked', "universities saying anything to get prospective students"? Give me a fvcking break! Its not like they are publicizing that students are going to wake up every morning with a rainbow out their window and Mr. Blue bird on their shoulder.
This is tantamount to a Fordham first year calling home mid semester and saying, "mom/dad its kinda dangerous around here....I mean, I seem to notice a lot of black people walking around during the day, many of whom do not look like well rounded individuals with an interest in promoting the betterment of society."
Wake the fvck up,... odds are happened upon Loyola's little enclave from either two streets, LSD from the south or Touhy etc. from the north. You cannot tell me one father did not look out his window between 294 and sheridan. Day time or not, RP is no Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
The university has been 'frank' with their notices. I say frank because it is precisely that in the way they inform individuals of current violence in the hood. You think they are going to put in Bold letters the number of students accosted in 20XX across their brochure???
It has always been a matter of wonder to me that so many large city universities are in blighted and/or dangerous areas, to the point where you have to wonder if there is a connection between the presence of a large university, and blighted apt buildings with dangerous people dwelling in them.
The interesting thing is that the presence of the institution predates the ruin of the neighborhood, often by many decades. Loyola has been here since 1878.
The urbanist Jane Jacobs, author of the landmark THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES, among a number of other books on the interplay between urban areas, the economy, and the lives of people dwelling therein.
Rogers Park is not very safe, but it's a wonderland compared to St. Louis' midtown (St. Louis U.) or west end (Washington U.). These were once elegant neighborhoods that have become extremely dangerous and blighted in the past 50 years,and no amount of investment in new and rehab construction or new businesses ever seems to set them right. Bradley U. in Peoria is sited in the shabbiest neighborhood in town. Even the area surrounding Northwestern in Evanston is experiencing many problems with street crime.
I can't think why this is and no one has a really solid, testable answer, but it seems that universities have the effect of flooding the local area with many thousands of short term residents, which makes for exploitive, rent-whore landlords who treat their buildings as cash cows as a result of short term residents who are often very hard on the property and who are moreover lacking in the long-term commitment to the neighborhood that permanent residents have.
I like having a major university in the area and I like having students around. They are a cheerful presence in the area. But I wish we could get a handle on the interplay between a big school and the surrounding area well enough to figure out just what we can do to change this strange dynamic.
How did I know that Laura was going to compare Rogers Park to St. Louis for the 10,000th fucking time.
Come on Laura, 'enough is enough' already. This isn't the 'Broken Arch' of St. Louie.
Real simple.
Scumbags view students as easy marks with money and a lack of sense. Also often inebriated. Depaul has crime issues too. Although with Depaul the scumbags have to travel farther to find their targets. In Rogers Park they are likely to be home grown scumbags.
The issue is not whether there is crime in any area, but what is being done to address it. Trying to link urban decay to universities seems specious at best.
Head to Milwaukee and check out the area around Marquette. The university has made a concerted effort over the last 20 years to better the neighborhood. To a significant extent they have succeeded.
What would Hyde Park be without the University of Chicago? I have an answer for you: Woodlawn. Empty lots, no real retail, crime, despair and general nothingness.
Last year there was a series of muggings around the Southport Corridor in Lakeview. Muggers likely came to the area because they perceived lt to be "rich" and have easy marks.
Last time I checked Uptown has no University and it certainly experienced a decline. Trying to link the presence of universities to decline would seem to be a difficult thing to prove in a 'social science' or economic sense.
Count the number of declining neighborhoods in Chicago and the number of major universities and I think you will see the former is much larger than the latter.
Now Loyola ain't a perfect neighbor or institution, nor is my grammar and speeling,but suggesting that it is somehow responsible for the decline in Rogers Park is silly silly silly.
The real issue should be what is the University doing to reduce crime and what are your foie gras loving alderbeast and police District commander doing to assist them.
OK, Craig,compare it to the neighborhood adjacent to Columbia University in New York, which was cleaned up only recently, and then only because it was rendered totally unaffordable to any one not megarich.
Or Bradley University in Peoria.
Or Purdue in LaFayette.
I wouldn't think much if it were only my personal theory, but no less an authority than Jane Jacobs noticed the same thing in every city she studied, and she was an authority on large American cities and how they worked,and how they deteriorated.
Nothing against students, who are a loveable bunch by and large, but it never pays to have large blocks of rentals occupied by people who are temporary residents. "Tourist" towns have similar problems.
I give you St.Louis as a comparison because the place is a textbook example of how NOT to do things in a city. If St. Louis does it, it is a bad thing to do, because those people wrote the book on how to trash a city. Trash your transit, encourage widespread gun ownership, fragment the place with highways, and destroy the tax base with too much church and university owned property- they did all this, and more, to destroy their city beyond repair?
And we are now doing the same stupid shit. I get very disturbed when I see a truly great city imitate a truly bad one.
Does Chicago,the best city in the country, just HAVE to imitate cities that are textbook cases of urban failure at it's most dismal?
Please, let's not let Chicago end up like Detroit, or Cleveland or some other dismal dump.
The theory put forth by "north coast" that urban universities cause blight are not borne out when one looks at the areas around DePaul, NYU, Columbia... and University of Chicago in particular shows that sometimes the opposite can be true. Hyde Park would almost certainly have succumbed to the decay all around it decades ago were it not for the stabilizing effect of the university. Likewise, Columbia played a large part in turning around the fortunes of Morningside Heights.
Ya know whenever I walk through a gentrified neighborhood anywhere in this country I am gonna find Starbucks locations.
My theory: Starbucks causes gentrification.
It makes as much sense as the Jane Jacobs assertion.
Maybe Jane, in her righteous anger and love for urban life, failed to realize that the reason you often found major Universities in declining neighborhoods was because typically such universities were in older city neighborhoods. Those areas were typically the first to see the problems caused by "white flight" and the increase in suburbia. Not many major universities on the fringes of cities, which were largely built up post World War Two.
This all brings me back to my "Prayer for Our Cities"
Now we should all bow our heads down and pray:
Lord,
Save us from the left wing know what is best busybodies.
Save us from the right wing imperial moralists.
Save us from those who would save us.
AMEN
The rant is ended go in peace. Thanks be to Pirate.
Inmate #1234-
I agree with you. When I first visited The Rog' to look at condos I had a man chase me down the street screaming at me with a squigee demanding that I "help him out." When I came back for a second look, another man welcomed me by telling me he was going to "bust my cracker ass."
No matter what Loyola may share with their prospective students, you have to be pretty oblivious not to know what you are getting into. Do a google search on the neighborhood and you'll come across sites like this.
I ultimately chose to live here because the same property would have cost double in Lakeview or Lincoln Park, and I really believe their is potential for huge improvements in the near future and the investment will pay off(maybe that makes me the naive one). Perhaps attending school in another city's urban ghetto softened me to the idea. At least here we don't have a police helicopter, aka ghetto bird, constantly circling above every night shining spotlights on the front lawn looking for rapists and murderers on the run. It's not safe here, but there are much more dangerous places you could be living.
I've always been amazed at how many people would buy a condo on Jonquil after just visiting at a Sunday open house. They freak out the first time they have to walk down Howard St. to the El, then show up all freaked out at their first 2422 CAPS beat meeting like the sky was falling. Too many people don't research before they move in. (Fulton Market is another example.)
As far as college campuses in dangerous areas, there's some fairly scary territory around one edge of Penn and Temple in Philadelphia. Not an unusual problem. Lots of college will expand where they can afford the property.
Fargo, I'm pretty astonished at people who don't know what kind of area they are buying into when they buy NOH, or other "marginal" city neighborhoods.
Howard St. almost screams at you when you get off the train.
But then, people buying during the Great Binge of 2001-2006 weren't weren't picky about anything, were they? Nobody was asking any questions. They didn't care where it was or how the loan was structured or how much it cost as long as they could afford the starting payments and get their feet in the door of "ownership". You could palm off anything for an inflated price- illegal conversions, crap construction, 400 Sq foot condo "homes", cruddy neighborhoods- anything with four walls. People were waiving inspections and signing loan docs without reading them.
Sorry for the double word there. The phone rang.
"Broken Arch"....LOL!!! Oh Craigie, you're a hoot. ;)
One comment to this loyola student. If you dont like the neighborhood, do something about it in three more years. Organize the students and get involved in local politics. Vote this moore-on of an alderman, who cares more about the war in Iraq than he does his own community, OUT OF OFFICE. Register to vote during the aldermanic elections, and vote for change. Spend a little time, do some research and help this community heal itself as our elected official is not doing the job himself.
BTW Craig, maybe we should get Moore charged with theft of services, since he collects his paycheck but doesn't do jack for this community except collect campaign donations for favors.............
North Coast:
Are you talking about the same Washington U that is surrounded by some of the nicest neighborhoods in St. Louis? I spent four years there and never felt remotely threatened in the immediate vicinity of the school (or even a little farther out, where the houses cost less than a million dollars).
About universities in "questionable" neighborhoods:
A bunch of the neighborhoods mentioned are Jesuit universities (Loyola, SLU, Fordham, Marquette), and with ideals related to service as well as education, perhaps they are located in the neighborhoods where their founders thought the presence of the university would be most beneficial to the surrounding community as well as to the students.
Eric, yes, I am talking about Washington U.
To the west of the University, you have posh Clayton, and that is a very nice neighborhood indeed.
To the east, where most students rent, you have the West End of St louis, which is very elegant in appearance but NOT NICE AT ALL- very, very dangerous. I won't go there in the daytime now, when I visit. The kids from Wash U. settle into apts. on Waterman close to Skinker and think they are in some sweet burb, when they are in one of the most dangerous areas in the midwest. The crime rate in that area (my old nabe) is horrific. It just LOOKS nice. I keep up and nothing has changed for the better. Good luck walking back from the new train line at night.
University City to the north is pretty scruffy around the loop, where most students dwell.
I know the areas you speak of extremely well because I lived in them for 15 years and still spend some time there. My mother lives close to Clayton.
I like it better around here, where I can usually walk the streets without problems and wait for the bus without being intimidated by thugs cruising in cars.
We have our problems and we should continue to work on solving them, which means getting rid of the people who generate the crime. However, we still have many advantages, and relative safety.
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