Penn ranked 16th most dangerous school

News website The Daily Beast recently ranked Penn as the 16th most dangerous school among a list of 50 American colleges and universities, a ranking that has been highly questioned for its methodology.

Penn is also ranked the second-most dangerous Ivy League institution, behind Harvard University. The Daily Beast used 2006-2008 data from schools that disclosed crime statistics as a part of the Clery Act, a federal law that requires all schools receiving federal aid to publicly disclose crime information.

The data was then organized into nine categories of crimes, including murder and robbery, and ranked by The Daily Beast’s “subjective judgment of violence,” with burglary having the lowest value and murder having a value 40 times higher, according to the site’s report.

Jonathan Kassa, executive director of Security on Campus, a nonprofit that works to improve campus safety, criticized the methodology of the survey — which only includes schools with 6,000 or more enrolled students — as “creating a bias against larger universities.”

“While the rankings may motivate schools to think more about safety, it does cause undue alarm in schools already doing enough, which is unfair to them,“ Kassa said. “It is a noble effort but I’m not sure how much good it does for the public.”

The Division of Public Safety does not seem harried by the report.

“Lots of agencies go out and do surveys,” Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said. “With our awards and accomplishments, our record stands better on its own rather than what a miscellaneous survey says.”

Undergraduate Assembly President and College senior Matt Amalfitano pointed to Penn’s location as “probably the majority of the reason why Penn is ranked that way.”

“I think there are always factors that you need to consider when going to school in an urban environment,” Amalfitano added. “But I definitely feel 100 percent safe at Penn.”

Others are assured of their safety because of the variety of resources available on Penn’s campus.

“I’m not that worried [about the ranking] because I’ve never felt endangered at school, even while living off campus,” College senior Allison Ruel said. “Penn Walk and Penn Ride are everywhere.”

The analysis did not distinguish between crimes against university-affiliated and unaffiliated individuals, the latter of which occur frequently in an urban environment.

This is The Daily Beast’s second “Most Dangerous Schools” report. Last year, Penn was not featured among a list of 25 schools.

Daily Beast staffers did not return multiple requests Monday through Wednesday for additional information on the rankings’ methodology, instead directing questions to the site’s explanation.

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