Since many college students have never lived on their own, they aren’t used to being aware of what’s going on around them. New students are often educated on proper safety procedures at the school they attend, and through experience they learn about being safe on their own. However, schools with attentive police, safe dorms and resources can still be suspect to a crime ridden community that surrounds the school.
CheckVideo recently conducted a study using data from the National Center for Education Statistics on the most and least safe college campuses around the country. They analyzed the crime rates of colleges with at least 1,000 students and found the schools with the highest and lowest crime rates in different categories. These categories include crimes such as robbery and burglary, aggravated assault, and violence against women.
Luckily, there aren’t any Virginia schools that top the list as one of the least safe colleges. However, that doesn’t mean crime is nonexistent at our colleges and universities in the state.
There is still data available in the study for every institution in Virginia.
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia, which is the flagship university of the state of Virginia, is home to nearly 22,000 students. Since 2013, there have been 738 crimes recorded at the Charlottesville school. The majority of these offenses are from general criminal offense (311), while robberies and burglaries have 137 incidents, violence against women has 66 incidents, and aggravated assault has 19 incidents. Despite this, UVA has recorded an average of over decrease in criminal offenses each year since 2013, with the most dramatic change being over 14% from 2014 to 2015.
George Mason University
Another large school in Virginia is George Mason University, which has over 35,000 students on their campus. Despite it being much larger than UVA, it has much less crime. Since 2013, GMU didn’t record a single aggravated assault on campus. The majority of their crimes come from general criminal offenses. There were also only 12 crimes of violence against women compared to UVA’s 66 incidents.
Virginia Commonwealth University
The institution in Virginia with the highest amount of aggravated assaults is Virginia Commonwealth University, which recorded 34 instances since 2013. VCU ranks #34 for overall aggravated assaults in the country as well. VCU is also located in Richmond, which is known to be one of the cities in America with the highest rates of murder and crime.
Crime Rates on Campus
While this information wasn’t meant to scare anyone, it is extremely important for students and parents to be aware of crime and other unsafe circumstances at a school. Students who live on campus and attend a school are typically provided with a lot of safety resources — for example, UVA provides safety blue lights for students to use to reach help immediately in case of an emergency on campus.
If you are ever concerned for you or your child’s safety at school, be sure to contact the safety department of the school to be given additional tips and resources on how to stay safe on campus. To see statistics on crime rates for other Virginia schools and schools outside of Virginia, click here.
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