Campus Safety

[EmersonAnne]

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So we had an incident this morning where two first years were robbed and carjacked at gunpoint on campus in broad daylight. Needless to say, it's shaken up the student body.

How is the crime at your school and what does your school's security team do to insure student safety?

 

[han14tra]

I'm in Center City, Philadelphia. About 10 students have been groped or robbed this year on or right near campus. It's scary, but I'm more worried about next year when I'll have to go on rotations in North Philly, Chester, Camden, etc which is why I'm investing in this gadget. It won't do much if they have a gun in my face, but try to rape me using physical force and I'll shoot metal prongs into your scrotum and electrocute you for 30 sec. 😱

 

[MossPoh]

I'm a 6'5", 255 guy (was 270 but ms2 is killing my gym time). I still take well lit areas at night if I'm walking the 20 minutes back. My school has a van that will pick you up and drop you off during off hours. They also have the standard emergency things all over and the occasional roaming cop, although there are still quite a few robberies. More than there should be. Also, the med school security guards walk girls to the parking garage when it is dark out, even if it is just to park their car closer to the school.

I have a handgun, but I don't carry concealed nor would I ever break school policy unless there were people absolutely going postal over a few days near me. I also have 2 shotguns. Makes me look like a gun nut, but the odd thing is that I'm really not. (One of the shotguns is for clay shooting and the other I won in a raffle of all things and has never even been fired.)

We actually had a grad student who went missing for a while before they found his body. He was abducted about 2 blocks from where I live, so that was pretty scary. I have to admit I may have been a bit twitchy for a while after that. It doesn't matter how big you are if the person has a gun to your head.

 

[EmersonAnne]

Also, the med school security guards walk girls to the parking garage when it is dark out, even if it is just to park their car closer to the school.

We have a great security team and they'll escort us anywhere on campus too. Both guys and girls. They're great about it too so I always feel comfortable calling them up if I'm studying late on campus or have labs that run late. But the disturbing part of this is that it happened in broad daylight while people were walking to morning classes. Two guys and two guns. The parking lot is just adjacent to the first year lecture hall so it isn't like it was out in the middle of nowhere or in a garage. It isn't. It's an open lot reserved for medical students only. There are no undergrads on our campus so it's a fairly small close-knit campus. I feel like if you can't feel safe from having a gun shoved in your face on campus in broad daylight, what the hell is wrong with the world?

I know security is doing their best. I was just looking for ideas from other students about how their campus is structured and how they try to circumvent crime.

By the way, we had a group of interviewees interviewing today too. Imagine being introduced to a med school on a day that there's an armed robbery on campus.

 

[Forthegood]

We had a guy get mugged in the parking lot earlier this year. The police report said the guy escaped without being robbed by kicking the guy in the face. The guy was either lying or a ninja.

 

[Bacchus]

In the 2 years I've been here, we've had 1 incident...a car broken into.

 

[LRAccord624]

+1 for getting a taser. You register it, much like you would a gun, and if you are forced to use it to protect yourself and you alert the police, you file a report and will be reimbursed for a new cartridge. At least, that's how it works in TX.

I haven't heard about anything happening while I've been here, but I know that people have been mugged/carjacked in the past.

 

[Frank Nutter]

My school (state school) opens certain facilities like the library to the public. We've had plenty of incidents and it's basically used as a free internet to the, ah, "urban community."

A lot of these members of the public are here every day, for the entire time the library is open, which leads me to believe some of them, aside from being jobless, are also homeless. Call me crazy but I don't believe a medical school library should serve as a homeless shelter. 😕 Just an opinion.

People worry about leaving their stuff at tables even just to go to the bathroom. Twice I've been asked what type of computer I am using. They also don't seem to understand students are here to study...The other day one guy sat down at my table and proceeded to make phone calls to every video game store in a 100 mile radius to ask if they had any PS3s. I gave up counting after 17 phone calls and moved elsewhere.

The school's response to this is of course not to fix anything but to hire more security guards and have them constantly patrol around the library, which is actually really distracting. The guards are friendly and say hi while they're obnoxiously snooping around your study area, but when it happens every 30 mins it's pretty aggravating.