An Ounce of Prevention: Violence on College Campuses
Campus safety should be an important concern for the administration, faculty, and students of American colleges and universities. Local, state, and national news frequently reports another act of violence on an American college campus. These violent acts range from physical assault to homicide. Colleges and universities work to confront these challenges, but the reality is “one person can, in a few brief moments, devastate a college community through an act of targeted violence” (Drysdale, Modzeleski, and Simons). Ensuring campus safety is a difficult task that requires cooperation from everyone, including the student population. Because violence on college campuses continues to increase,
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Campus violence has escalated in both frequency and intensity since then. Currently, it appears in many forms that range from bullying and sexual assault to the most recent mass shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. Statistics from 2005 reveal that seventeen percent of American college students reported that they were victims of on-campus violence. It could therefore be calculated that hundreds of thousands of violent acts were committed on college campuses that year. Campus violence not only harms the victim it also affects the entire campus community. The survivors of violent campus trauma are more likely to experience long-term academic, emotional, and physical consequences. The rest of the campus, including student body, administration, faculty, and staff, may also experience increased levels of fear and anxiety as well as reduced productivity.
The Cleary Act of 1990 requires that American colleges and universities record and report all crimes committed on and near campus. This information must be reported annually to students, employees, and the general public. American College Search, a web-based college search engine, uses information obtained from the United States Department of Education. It currently reports that East Central Community College rates a C- on campus safety. It cites the grade as a result of the reported number of burglaries and aggravated
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Schools can take numerous steps to improve school connectedness in order to promote learning and to reduce negative outcomes, such as violence. These include supporting effective classroom management practices, promoting cooperative learning techniques, providing educators with training and support to better meet the diverse needs of students, providing opportunities to actively engage families, and creating open communication and decision-making processes.
It stands to reason that since sixty percent of the people who commit violent crimes on college campuses come from the student population, that perhaps prevention programs should also include students. With proper training, people can accurately learn to predict seventy-five percent of violent affective attacks and seek assistance before it escalates out of control. Aggression management training for entering college freshman could be a step in the right direction. It could be a part of the campus orientation process and would not require any additional
Supporting Point Why should college campuses be any different? They contain the country’s future presidents, senators and judges. They are also one of the most vulnerable places because most colleges don’t allow firearms on campus. The most important factor is that many students don’t pay attention to their surroundings so they are put in dangerous situations and they should be able to defend themselves to a certain extent.
"Statistics about Sexual Assault and College Campuses." Statistics about Sexual Assault. Sarah Lawrence College, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013. .
A. Background Information: The next four years of the students’ lives after high school mark the moment they become independent. Because of the freedom, college students are more susceptible to careless actions like drinking, doing drugs, and even committing sexualt assualt. Sexual assault has been around for years and the actions to prevent this heinous crime has been minimal, especially in colleges and universities. In 2015, Brock Turner, a student from Stanford, sexually assaulted a young woman on campus. Turner claimed that because he was drinking, was with friends, and saw a “promiscuous” female student, that pressured him into committing such a heinous crime. This was because Stanford University didn’t teach its students sexual assault prevention which caused the victim to be harm and violated. By teaching college students about sexual assault prevention, it decreases the number of sexual assault cases on campus, prevents psychological damage to the victim’s mental state, and educates other students to know the signs
Rape is the most common violent crime on American college campuses. A numerous amount of issues dealing with sexual assaults has been caused by unsafe environments on college campuses. Over the past years there has been a
The college life is far more dangerous than what we think in general. Most of the crimes are witnessed in the college campus, and one of the most critical and life-consuming crime was sexual assault. However, the sexual assault is still concerning and remains the controversy. Most college students do know that sexual violence should always be pleaded guilty. The sexual assault often resulted from alcohol and parties, and the undergraduate freshmen do not realize how violent sexual assault is. All members of the college community need to realize how sexual assault can harm life and success.
This study attempts to measure the fear of crime on the campus of mainly the University of New Mexico and other campuses across the nation. I attempt to explore the fear of crime from a student’s perspective. This research will enhance the research that has been done on the issues and topics of fear and crime on college campuses. This study will measure the level of perceived risk by taking into consideration various variables such as demographics, routines, and prior experiences with victimization. With this research, I seek to answer the following questions: How afraid are students of being victimized while on campus, and what factors contribute to that fear of crime. The research will hopefully yield several contributions, such as knowing the level of fear that student’s experience, universities can determine the best approach to making their student population feel safer. Further research could be conducted to study whether students’ fear of crime is related to their awareness of crime, and whether that awareness of crime reduces the possibility of victimization. Another interesting aspect is that college campuses are communities with their own set of norms and regulations, and some have populations comparable to the size of small towns and cities. Studying fear of crime within those communities can provide more insight into fear of victimization in small units, such as neighborhoods, or larger units, such as cities.
College campuses have been known to be popular breeding grounds for rumors. Ask any college student walking around a typical campus for the latest gossip, and they may flood you with more stories, quips, and anecdotes than you may have ever asked for. Some of these stories lead to codes and rules for living safely on campus, as urban legends about campus-related murders and crimes begin to circulate more frequently. In addition, these stories may deal with some supernatural elements. With the increased security alerts nationwide, caution is exercised in all circumstances and a bit of the anxiety and security alerts have spread to American colleges as well.
When thinking of college campuses, most adults would assume that these campuses are one hundred percent safe for their children to attend. The film The Hunting Ground and the book Crash Into Me, by Liz Seccuro, were both introduced in class, and demonstrate how college campuses are not as safe as they’re advertised to be. Both the film, and the movie together depicted how college campuses deal with the outcome of a sexual assault on campus, which is not adequate or acceptable for today’s standards in helping aid sexual assault victims. As expressed in the film, The Hunting Ground (2015), one in every five women while attending college, have been sexually assaulted during their time period at college. This film informs viewers of the existent
Promoting the sense of school connectedness can be done in many different ways and the ideas are endless because each school is different. Some strategies that could increase school connectedness are to provide more education opportunities to families. This will allow families to be more involved with their child’s education and be more willing to understand the material they are learning. Having a family involved in the education process will help the child be ore willing to learn and want their family to be involved. Sometimes parents have a hard time helping their children with school or be involved with school because they do not understand how to help. I think weekly or bi weekly parent workshops would be a very beneficial way to allow students and parent to feel more connected to their school and have a positive influence on their education. School connectedness is very important to have and it should be implemented
Crime and fear of crime on campus are major concerns for college students, parents, administrators, and policymakers. Students must feel comfortable living on or at least walking on campus. College populations may be more at risk of sexual assault than the general population because they are in the age group that experiences the most rape generally and because they participate in many dating and social activities. In addition, substance use of all kinds is common among college students and it increases risk of victimization by reducing the aptitude to battle unwanted situations. Yet the majority of college students are not victimized. Fear of crime can stem from many things, either the population size, neighborhood you are in, age, gender, and even your ethnicity. There is much curiosity that is growing with wanting to understand the level of fear on campuses at Universities all around the world. Questions such as what constitutes this fear or how safe is the university are essential.
Based on my research, this report evaluates if the potential risk for injuries and death resulted from the latest mass shootings on U.S. College campuses should increase public interest, and if new legislative bills in favor of arming professors or students should be created.
The collection of violent crime data in the UCR includes the numbers of murders and manslaughters, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, property crimes, burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts, and arsons (Table 9). The most common crime that is rarely reported throughout college campuses is rape. Based on the UCR, the rape counts from 2005 through 2012 throughout campuses in New York State ar...
School shootings are becoming very popular within society throughout the years. For example, if you look into the news today you will see various schools which have been affected by violent crimes. In 2013, a least 27 shootings occurred near or on a college campus. The shootings that took place were believed to pose a threat to several
On college campuses today, there is a lot of violence. Violence occurs for many reasons, its unfortunate but true. One of the main reasons that violence accurs is because 90 percent of violence on college campuses is alcohol related. That is one of the many reasons why violence occurs.
School community relationship helps to improve the quality of education for all children. It helps parents and other citizens recognize their responsibility for the quality