Campus Safety: How Safe is Your College?

I wanted to share a great federal resource today that can help you measure the campus safety at any college or university.

All you need to do is visit the website of The Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool. (It’s a federal website, which explains the clunky name.)

With the federal college safety tool, you can find statistics for individual schools in these five areas:

  • Criminal offenses
  • Hate crimes
  • Arrests
  • Disciplinary actions
  • Fire statistics

I used the college safety tool to see what kind of crime is happening at Juniata College, which is my daughter’s school. This school is out in the middle of nowhere — actually beautiful central Pennsylvania — and when my daughter lived in a dorm, she never, ever locked her door. And that’s normal for kids at this school.

When I typed in Juniata College, I discovered that in 2009 the school had zero criminal offenses in the nine categories, including arson, car theft, sexual offenses and burglary. There were also no hate crimes or fires at this college.  There were two arrests for drug abuse and five for liquor law violations.

It’s nice to know that Juniata is such a safe school.

How safe is your child’s campus?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon best seller, and she also writes for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.


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  1. A professor of Northeastern University, so I heard from his associate in a hallway of a local Holiday Inn, will be releasing a book soon that claims a college campus is the safest place to live in America.