First-year students attending Tufts may find the number of security alerts and tests already issued this year by the Department of Public Safety a bit shocking; but for upperclassmen, it is almost commonplace to receive e-mails about attacks and muggings near campus. Security alerts issued to students have seen an increase in the last five years but, contrary to what some students may believe, this increase does not represent an actual rise in campus crime.
Since 2004, crime rates at Tufts and in the areas surrounding campus have remained relatively constant.
Click the graph at right to see these statistics.
"Over the past five years … there hasn't been any significant trend up or down. It's been basically level," Geoff Bartlett, technical services manager in the Department of Public Safety, said of crime on campus.
Bartlett explained that, though crime rates on campus have not markedly risen, what has increased is the university's use of safety alerts on the Medford/ Somerville campus.
"In 2007, we started issuing a lot more safety alerts for crimes in the area around campus, and we're not required to do so," Bartlett said. "We are by federal law required to issue what's termed ‘timely warning' for a certain list of incidents when they occur on specifically defined geography. But we've taken a little bit [of a] broader approach there, and any time an incident occurs which represents a serious or continuing threat to the Tufts community, even if it didn't happen immediately on campus … we issue the safety alert."
Sociology Professor John Conklin, who specializes in criminology and has published several books on the topic, explained that an increase in security alerts may give students a false perception of actual campus crime.
"If the safety alerts now are more common there can be a perception of more crime without more crime occurring — it just gets more attention," Conklin said. "Giving attention to it can create a fear, and that's sort of the problem in alerting people. But I think the police make the decision — and I think it's the right one — that people are better off knowing."
Sophomore Laura Moreno's impression of crime on campus seems to support this theory. She noted that her perception of crime at Tufts has changed since she's been living on the Hill.
"I wasn't expecting that many crimes around these areas," Moreno said. "In the day I'll walk around alone. [But] at night I might not even go back to my dorm."
Outside reports may increase concern on campus. A recent article in the online publication The Daily Beast cited Tufts as the fourth most dangerous college in the country. The report, however, included crime statistics from the Boston campus and the areas surrounding both campuses. In 2007, there were no reported robberies or aggravated assaults that actually occurred on the Boston campus, but 22 robberies and 22 assaults were reported on the public property near campus.
According to Conklin, reporting crime statistics at colleges is particularly difficult because the actual definition of a "campus crime" is unclear.
"Students who are victimized often are victimized off campus," Conklin said. "From the student's point of view, it's not really off campus because they've got an apartment a few blocks maybe from campus and they consider that all part of their university experience."
This became an issue in the 1980s when the area between Boston's Downtown Crossing and the Tufts medical school campus was a hotbed for prostitution and adult movie theatres. In 1983, a Tufts professor was convicted of murdering a prostitute that he had met in the area.
That was something that was seen as a Tufts crime because he worked there, but the crime actually didn't occur anywhere near there; he lived in a suburb south of Boston but he met her because of that area being adjacent to where he worked," Conklin said.
Most of the crimes that are reported to the Tufts police that involve violence or a threat of violence occur off campus. While the Department of Public Safety is not obligated to issue safety alerts for many of these crimes, they hope that keeping students informed will help them stay safe in the future.
"We try to be as proactive as we can in our presentation of safety and security awareness programs," said Ronald Brevard, assistant director of the Department of Public Safety. "It really has to do with the awareness ... of what's going on not only on campus but around the campus as well."
In addition to safety alerts, Tufts takes a number of measures to aid in the prevention of crime. Brevard noted the campus blue light telephones, the police escort service and Operation Awareness presentations to first-year students as a few examples. The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) also re-achieved accreditation in 2009 after meeting over 270 state standards, and much of the TUPD staff is involved in the university's Residential Community Policing (ResCop) Program, which gets police officers directly involved with particular dorms on campus to act as a liaison between Residential Life and Public Safety.
Brevard feels that the university's efforts have paid off.
"Every three years. the Tufts Office of Institutional Research and Evaluation … survey[s] students, staff and faculty on the Medford/ Somerville campus as to their perceptions of safety on campus," Brevard said. "The most recent one, conducted in 2008, revealed that more than 95 percent of the respondents felt safe or very safe on campus."
Still, Moreno said that she would feel safer if the Tufts police were able to patrol the areas surrounding campus more thoroughly.
"[I would like to see] campus police around the campus … and outside of campus," she said.
Conklin noted that there are ways students can avoid being targeted, such as traveling in large groups, keeping to well-lit roads and staying alert.
"Sometimes people, I think, get a false sense of security with their cell phones," he said. "If somebody comes up to mug you and you've got a cell phone, you maybe can dial 911, but it's probably going to be too late."
Conklin emphasized certain techniques that may prevent injury if approached by a mugger, such as not fighting back against the assailant and avoiding eye contact.
"One thing I think people maybe aren't told is to not look at the offender in the face, because that could be perceived as a confrontation, an effort to memorize a face to identify them, and that could be threatening and that could escalate the level of violence," he said. "Now, the police might tell people the opposite. They might say, ‘We need an identification if we're going to arrest this person,' so it kind of goes both ways. You might want to look at the person when they're going away from you or something like that."
Regardless of whether a proper description can be given, Conklin highlighted the importance of reporting crimes or attempted crimes when they do occur. Though the criminal may not necessarily be apprehended, knowledge of a crime's location and nature can greatly assist the police in future prevention efforts.
