No, you aren't seeing things. It is true. New York Institute of Technology topped the list of the safest college campuses in America. This is a true honor to the school and an award that should be taken with great pride.
In light of the recent Yale University slaying of a doctoral student Annie Le, The Daily Beast, a well known online publication, conducted a survey ranking how colleges compared to one another safety-wise. Rather than highlighting the schools that were the most crime-ridden, NYIT had the great honor of topping that survey boasting a perfect record, "undefeated" if you will ,with not one reported crime occurring on campus. Honorable mention went to the Farmingdale State University campus doing a great job coming in second, making Long Island a great place to attend college.
Now you might be asking yourself what criteria came into play when determining the ranking of the universities on this list. Clark Merrefield, the chief researcher for this study, was looking at three things when composing his list. To begin with, the university or college had to have at least 6,000 enrolled students. Next, the school had to have some on-campus housing. Finally, and saving the biggest for last, Mr. Merrefield and his team of researchers looked at the 2006-2007 crime rates list for each school. After all was said and done, here is NYIT at the top, beating out the other 4,000 schools that were measured.
"You read all these stories in the news about stuff happening on college campuses," said Mike Dawson, a freshman Economics major from Southern New Jersey. "I think it's awesome that we are the safest."
For the past two decades, colleges and universities nationwide have been required under the federal Clery Act to report annually to the United States Department of Education about crimes on or near campus. This includes crimes of murder, assault, sexual offenses and robberies. The law, called the Clery Act was passed in 1990 and named after a Lehigh University freshman that had been raped and murdered in her dorm room. After the tragedy, her parents found out that there had been many violent incidents at the university. The Department of Education frequently audits the reports of crime, and schools are often fined for noncompliance. The Department of Education also reports, that this fall Congress is expected to strengthen the Clery Act's safety regulations, which will include the establishment of the National Center for Campus Public Safety to help colleges and universities respond to the security challenges of the 21st Century.
NYIT, having a student population of close to 12,000 students, and dormitories in Old Westbury, as well as Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, has put safety at the top of its list. Some might not realize just how incremental safety is in the college career of a student and even faculty. There are some scary statistics out there that clarify just how important safety is. Reported by Rainn.Org, every 2.5 minutes someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. That is a horrific number. Imagine that in less than the time it takes for one of your favorite songs to be listened to on your iPod, someone was sexually assaulted in the U.S. Even scarier is that 1 out of every 8 college women will be raped in their college career. This puts into perspective the superb job that NYIT has done. Not only was there not one reported incident of sexual assault, there wasn't one reported crime at all.
Students and faculty at NYIT can rest assured that when walking to their cars from class they are on the safest campus in America.
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