by Todd Feathers, News Correspondent
Northeastern University was recently ranked the 30th most dangerous college campus in America by The Daily Beast, an online news and culture publication, in its second annual survey of college campuses.
Northeastern did not appear on last year’s rankings, which covered the 25 most dangerous campuses. Boston schools ranked poorly on this year’s expanded list, released Sept. 14, with five landing spots.
Tufts University topped the list, with Harvard ranking second. MIT placed 13th and Lesley University was put in 21st place.
Northeastern officials offered little comment on the survey because they did not feel the survey was legitimate, Director of Communications Renata Nyul said.
“[The survey] has been widely discredited, so there’s no point in discussing it in relation to our university,” she said in an e-mail to The News.
The rankings were based on nine categories of crimes, including murder, rape, assault, robbery and arson. The crimes were assigned point values based on their “subjective amount of violence,” with murder worth 40 points, and burglary worth one. The points were then divided by the number of students.
The Daily Beast took statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, the FBI and the Secret Service from 2006 to 2008. These statistics were in conjunction with the Clery Act, a federal mandate requiring schools that receive federal funding to disclose crime information annually.
While no murders, negligent homicides or non-forcible rapes were listed, The Daily Beast reported 130 robberies, 120 burglaries, 82 car thefts, 72 aggravated assaults, 26 forcible rapes and 6 arsons.
Some students and professors said they did not think the Daily Beast’s survey was accurate based on their experiences while at Northeastern.
James A. Fox, Northeastern professor of criminology, law and public policy, and author of the recent book “Violence and Security on Campus,” criticized The Daily Beast survey’s ranking method.
“I think you have to take this data with a grain of salt – maybe the entire salt shaker,” he said in reference to the Clery Act numbers used by the Daily Beast. “Criminologists like myself would not give these rankings much credibility.”
Fox cited a 2008 Reader’s Digest survey that ranked the safety of 135 college campuses, in which Northeastern was found to be the second safest behind only Johns Hopkins University.
Students supported Fox’s comments and did not agree with The Daily Beast’s findings based on some of their own experiences.
“I definitely feel safe,” said Chelsea Bell, a senior communication studies major, who said she has never been the victim of a crime while at Northeastern. “I lived on Mission Hill for a couple years and felt safe there too.”
Vish Wesh, a senior pharmaceutical sciences major, said he was the victim of one incident in which intoxicated students threw glass bottles at him. But he said he still considers the campus to be a safe place.
“[Campus] is pretty safe, it’s just during Christmas time,” he said. “That’s the time crime rates go up, that’s when you have to take extra precautions.”
Fox said students just need to use common sense to stay safe.
“I wouldn’t, at three in the morning, venture far away off campus,” he said. “If you have valuable property, you don’t want to be showing it off … I don’t think Northeastern students are at risk in particular.”
