 than the killing of a Purdue University students. Four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in their room. Shots were fired at the University of Virginia. This is a breaking story. From overnight at least three people have been killed. When you see reports like these of students being killed and shot when they're studying at university, what does it make you feel? You probably feel scared and you might even think that it's not a good idea to study in the United States or to live on campus. That's a totally normal reaction. More and more people are starting to say, you know what, I'd rather not study in the United States because I don't want to die. Not wanting to die is a perfectly reasonable thing, but at the same time, I want to know for real, are college campuses safe? It turns out that university campuses might actually be the safest places in the United States, with some exceptions, which we'll get into. But how do we figure out how safe a college campus is? College campuses are part of a greater community. So if we look at the police data from the area around the campus, we should get an idea of how dangerous that area is, and then we can compare that data with the statistics reported by campus security departments. And we can see if the campus is as dangerous as the surrounding area, or if it's actually safer or maybe more dangerous. So I took 10 universities that are located all over the United States to get an idea of just how safe their campuses are. For example, if I look at the data from the area around Pace University in Manhattan, that corresponds to New York's first precinct. They have about 27,000 people living in that area. And the Pace University campus has about 13,000 people. So that gives us a ratio of population, which we can use to adjust all the crime statistics from New York's first precinct. They reported 135 robberies in that area. So you would expect Pace to have about 65 robberies when adjusting for population. In reality, they only had one. The same thing happens with assaults. There were 121 assaults in that area. And so you would expect 58 to happen on campus. In reality, zero. This pattern holds true in most of the other areas that I looked at. You can take a look here, for example, at University of Michigan. Same thing happens with Pittsburgh. You have two assaults compared to 112 expected assaults. University of New Mexico was recently highlighted as one of the most dangerous college campuses in the United States. And if you compare it to the surrounding area, it is still way safer. 72 expected robberies and only two. What about a really dangerous city, right? Chicago gets a really bad reputation. In fact, I've had people ask me on this channel if it's safe to go and study at Illinois Tech. So let's find out. You would expect about 17 robberies, but there were only three on the IIT campus. And similarly, you would expect about 16 assaults, but there were only nine. I'm not gonna go through every single chart here because they kind of all say the same thing. College campuses are anywhere from five to like 60 times safer than the surrounding area. Okay, but like what about mass shootings, right? Like there's mass shootings all over the United States. Every single day, there's like a mass shooting reported and you know, some crazy guy goes into like Walmart or goes into a school or go into my university. Like what if I just go to the United States and then I end up getting shot by some crazy person randomly while I'm watching a movie. Mass shooting is defined as any sort of gun violence incident that results in at least four people being injured. Obviously reading about those events makes you feel scared and like wondering whether some crazy person is gonna come around the corner and just start shooting everybody. Like that's a perfectly natural thing to be afraid of. But if you look at the data, it's actually not that bad. For starters, if we just focus on universities, there have only been nine mass shootings at universities since 1966. But even if your campus was unable to prevent a mass shooting, mass shootings actually don't kill that many people in the United States. So far in 2022, the Gun Violence Archive has reported over 600 mass shootings and those mass shootings in the United States this year have resulted in 642 deaths and about 2,500 people injured. But let's stop and analyze that number for a second. 642 people dead from mass shootings. In a country where there's over 330 million people, that is a very, very tiny number of people who are going to be affected by a mass shooting. Even if we add up both those numbers, right? The people who died and the people who got injured and we put them together and we say, okay, 3,200 people were victims of mass shootings. That's still less than many causes of death in the United States. For example, 3,700 people every year drowned. I don't see you going, oh, it's not safe to go in the pool, but what? You won't study in the United States because you're afraid of a mass shooting? You're more likely to die in the water. Do you also not eat? Because you're 63% more likely to choke on your food and die than you are to be even injured in a mass shooting in the United States. Oh, and the swimming pool gets a little more dangerous because you're 2.5 times as likely to die from skin cancer than you are from a mass shooting. Literally, if you're sitting at a swimming pool eating a hot dog on a sunny day, you are exposing yourself to much more risk than you are for a mass shooting. And I don't want to minimize the damage that mass shootings have. I want to make it clear that these are tragedies and there are ways to prevent them which US politicians don't seem interested in. And I think it's horrible that we even have to have this discussion. But I also want to put it into context and give you some perspective. If all you read are news stories about mass shootings, you're going to think that there's mass shootings just all the time, everywhere, and that you won't be safe in the United States. And that's not true. The news loves to report on this stuff because it gets a lot of clicks, it gets a lot of attention, but it doesn't accurately represent the real danger which is actually very minimal. If you're one of like the 20 people who still here watching this video, then this is the part where we get to a bit of an uncomfortable topic which is sexual assault and rape. I feel like it's a conversation that needs to be had especially for female students. I'm a six foot three, you know, mostly bald headed white dude who isn't likely to be raped or fondled or stalked. But you might be. In fact, on some campuses, you might be more likely to be the victim of a sexual assault than you would be if you were just living in the surrounding area. There are universities that are much safer than the surrounding area. For example, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the University of Michigan is found, there were nine rapes reported and only zero in the university. So good job, University of Michigan. But there are also quite a few universities that kind of perform as expected. In Arizona State, you would expect about 39 incidents and there were actually 38. In the University of Miami, you would expect about 29 and there were 30. And for the University of New Mexico, there were 39 expected and 38 incidents. But there are also some campuses where the risk is a little higher than you would expect from the surrounding area. The University of Maryland is a good example. If we adjust for population, we would expect about eight or nine to happen on campus. In reality, that number was 28. And for a moment, I thought maybe this was just a big university thing because I noticed that a lot of the bigger universities seem to match or even maybe exceed expectations. But it's not because I also pulled data from a small liberal arts college, Franklin & Marshall. There were about two and a half sexual assault incidents that would be expected and the actual number was nine. Now, I don't want to speculate as to why that is, but I do want to take the moment to give you some safety tips that you can apply to make it less likely for these things to happen to you. First of all, bring a friend, have a buddy. The buddy system is really good at keeping you safe. People who commit sexual assault like this guy. Yes, we drank beer, I liked beer, still like beer. These people are predators. They look for easy opportunities. So don't make yourself an easy opportunity. Bring a friend with you, go places with other people. You'll probably have more fun that way too. Whether you're going to a party with a friend or by yourself, make sure that other people know where you are going and what time they should expect you to be back. Just something as simple as letting a friend know, hey, I'll be back at 11, if not, call me. That could be the difference between you filing a police report or simply getting a ride home when your friend comes to look for you. Third thing, if you don't feel safe, get out of there. Mosquito, we should exterminate them all, frankly. If you don't feel safe somewhere, get out. Just go, leave, okay? Because maybe your instinct is telling you something and you'd rather be the person who was a little bit overly cautious and left the party early, but got to have a safe night's sleep than the person who had poor judgment stuck around and had something happen. Christ on a cucumber. If you don't feel safe, get out. Most college campuses, if you make a phone call, will have someone come out to walk you back to your dorm. And finally, big one, lock the door. You know, university dorms are typically locked at the outside by keypads, but sometimes people like prop the doors open while they're doing stuff, don't allow that. Close those doors. When it comes to your dorm room doors, make sure you lock those two and keep your stuff safe. One of the reasons I was able to get so much data about college campus safety is because of the Clary Act. Jean Clary was a woman who was murdered in her dorm room in 1986. And her parents felt that the university had been covering up a ton of security violations. So they started an organization to promote campus safety and they actually got legislation passed the Clary Act, which requires college campuses to report this information to students and their families. In fact, you can search basically any university's name and Clary report and you will find data from the last three years on all of the categories that I've covered today and more. So if you're looking to figure out if your college is safe, that's where you need to look. For me, one of the saddest parts of Jean Clary's story is just how avoidable it was if she had just locked her door. Her killer probably would not have come in and done what he did. She left her door unlocked because her roommate was supposed to be coming back later and didn't want to have to get up and open the door for her. And that simple decision made it possible for someone to come in and murder her. Now again, that's an extremely unlikely scenario, but just taking small steps to prevent those things can keep you off of these statistic lists. So overall, is it safe to study in the United States? If you're a dude, absolutely. If you're a woman, it's about as safe as it is anywhere else. You should just use precautions to make sure that you don't become a target for certain kinds of violence. But really, you have a 99.998% chance of being totally fine. College campuses, statistically speaking, are some of the safest places you could be. I've been to over 25 college campuses and at no point did I ever feel like I was in danger or that someone was gonna steal my stuff or that I had to watch my back. College campuses are very safe and universities take safety very seriously. Ultimately, I don't want you to give up on your dreams of studying in the college of your choice or going to the United States to study because you're worried about safety. There are way more things that you should be concerned about besides your safety on campus. Odds are, you're gonna be completely fine. If you're still here watching this, I just wanna say thank you so much for taking time out of your day to watch this video and if you're still here, that means the world to me. I hope that this video has reassured you a little bit about campus safety and maybe has gotten rid of some of that fear. Thank you again for being here. I will see you next week.