Harvard Safer Than Yale, New Study Shows

Harvard may not be the safest campus in America, but it is twice as safe as Yale, a new study reports.

The study, conducted by an online news agency, APBnews, and a Pennsylvania consulting firm, the CAP Index, studied the likelihood students would be victims of violent crime on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods.

But some of the schools that fared poorly in the report criticized the study for focusing on those neighborhoods rather than on-campus crime.

Harvard was ranked the 541st most dangerous out of the 1,497 campuses studied. The school earned a seven on a "risk scale" of one to ten, the survey reported.

APBnews editors said that meant

Harvard students face about double the average national risk of being victims of violent crime, according to the study.

Harvard fared well for a school in an urban area, and the University was ranked safer than other Ivy League schools with city campuses, said Robert Port, senior editor for APBnews.

The University of Pennsylvania, was ranked 41st most dangerous campus, and Columbia University, was ranked 43. Yale finished 182. All three schools were ranked a 9 on the risk scale--the second highest ranking.

Princeton came in 1,066 out of 1,497 schools, the lowest risk factor of any Ivy League school.

Dartmouth also scored well. Both schools are located in rural areas, which was a big contributor to their score, Port said.

The study, called the 1999 College Community Crime Risk Assessment, combines 11 socioeconomic factors with 10 years of Uniform Crime Reports from the FBI to predict future crime trends.

Other Boston area colleges scored similarly to Harvard. Boston-based Emerson College and Suffolk University also scored a 7, but MIT scored an 8, reflecting a different immediate neighborhood than Harvard.

Peggy A. McNamara, spokesperson for the Harvard University Police Department, said the Harvard students have benefited from a falling crime rate in the surrounding areas.

"Cambridge is doing really well with crime prevention, so we're benefiting from that," she said.

Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Ga. was named the highest-risk college neighborhood in the U.S. with students more than 10 times more likely to be crime victims than the national average. Anna Maria College, in Paxton, Mass., was named the lowest risk.

Many college officials nationwide criticized the report because it focused on the college's neighborhood rather than the actual campus--where violent crimes are rare. A school in a violent neighborhood could be ranked at high risk for crime, even if the actual campus was safe.

Karon Daniel, the interim director of public relations at Morris Brown, wrote that the report "paint[s] a misleading picture and unduly alarms parents."

Myra R.H. Kodner, the program coordinator for the crime-prevention group Security on Campus, criticized the report for not looking more closely at the nature of colleges.

"There are schools that are in less than desirable areas that make a good effort at safety," she said.

Much of campus crime is related to substance abuse, Kodner said, and the report is "not telling you what happens when you put people from different experiences and emotional needs in the same areas."

Alan Stone, the Vice President for Public Affairs at Columbia, called the report "at odds with reality."

Some schools have criticized the fact that CAP Index refused to release the 11 factors that went in to the computations.

Port said the consulting firm would not release proprietary company information, but he said he believed the scale was accurate. CAP Index has been 70 percent to 90 percent accurate in predicting levels of actual crime, he said.

"They are intellectually honest people," Port said. "It should be taken with a grain of salt, but it's really good information."