We railed against the internet provider yesterday and the frustration of being unable to display the theme image for this week’s Weather Report right at the top of the story. That makes it a little easier to slide into the the top of the story heap on the day after a national holiday. You will have to click on the slide icon below, marvel at the cavalcade of things alleged to be “breaking news.” Instead, we will encourage you to click away but it really doesn’t have much to do with the story that caught our eye late yesterday.

We had always been proud to have attended the university we did. That has lingered down through the years, but there are problems. The political story that has swept over much of academia in the last few years has a certain surreal quality that has caused us to push back a little from our usual Fall fixation. That would be the kind of football played at The Big House up in Ann Arbor, seating available for 110K fans.

Adding to the excitement is the fact that the old Big Ten conference has added some teams for added excitement. There may be twenty or thirty teams in the Big Ten and we quit counting. But that wasn’t the big news. Our university often pops up for having published a major scientific or social paper. According to the late digital edition yesterday, we were recently subject of another sort of story.

The opening paragraph noted that college has started off again, and the people at the Degree Choices non-profit who did the story noted that The University of Michigan was a local favorite for bright kids who wanted to go to a school a little closer to home than leaving the State for the fine schools of the northeast United States. It was one of the reasons some of attended, anyway. But this headline had nothing to do with that:

In a shocking turn of events, U of M has been named to the list of “The Most Dangerous College Campuses in America” according to a recent survey. Not only did U of M make the list, they landed right at the top. The ranking is based on a variety of factors, but as Mark Twain noted, there are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics.”

It’s important to keep in mind that statistics can be misleading, so the authors of the paper used data from Campus Safety and Security published by the Department of Education. That organization is often mentioned as being on the block for reductions in Government spending.

Their thoughts about Ann Arbor are based on football, academics and crime. This report refers to “violent crimes on campus at public, private, and non-profit universities.” The researchers selected institutions of learning with at least 500 students whether they had on-campus housing or not. Time span considered? Yep. It includes the whole aberrant COVID experience and more, running from 2019 through 2021.

The study depicts violent crime as including stuff like:

Rape
Murder/manslaughter
Aggravated assault
Robbery

Alumni are traditionally proud of their massive campus and tens of thousands of students, faculty and and staff members. Simple size of the population being considered will naturally produce more reported incidents than those from smaller schools. But Twain’s observation notwithstanding, U of M took the top position as the most hazardous of “The 27 Most Dangerous College Campuses in America.” There were 1,468 incidents reported over the period.

The pandemic may have introduced some extraneous factors into the statistical mix. Still, the numbers are interesting and we still have friends who live in the area without complaint. Or at least mild complaint. “Safety concerns are not unique to one institution,” they say, and things may be OK. Many universities face similar challenges, although adding all those new teams to the Big Ten may further disrupt things.

Alumni also remember that the University of Michigan has a “rich history of academic excellence, groundbreaking research, and countless success stories.” We understand the campus Administration considers safety at school to be a top priority for action and remains committed to providing a “secure and supportive environment.” We have grandchildren who may be considering U of M as a fairly close option for a quality collegiate degree. plus, academic excellence was not measured. If all we need to worry about is rape, manslaughter or murder, how bad could things be?

After all, we can always shout “Go Blue!” and take it from there, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com