Whenever something bad happens in the neighborhoods around Youngstown State — most recently a string of robberies around Wick Park — it always seems to reflect negatively on the university. That belief is not a stretch by any measure, but what we must remember is that the university is a separate part of the city from the areas around it. YSU’s campus is a notably safe area in the city of Youngstown.
According to the most recent Annual Campus Safety and Fire report released by the YSU Police Department, there were only seven violent crimes on YSU’s campus in 2011, the most recent year for which figures were released. Those seven crimes were five burglaries, one aggravated assault and one robbery.
YSUPD recently found, through a survey of 586 YSU students, that 92.5 percent of those polled feel safe on campus. Obviously, those results can’t speak to the entire student body but it can tell us this: that on the campus of our university, you are safe. Seven violent crimes among 14,617 students is not necessarily cause for concern.
However, we can’t ignore the fact that these recent robberies all happened to YSU students. What must be kept in mind, though, is that these robberies are not the fault of any shortcomings of campus safety. They are, more than likely, three separate incidents that just happened to target four YSU students in the area.
Remember that the next time you hear about another YSU crime on the news; remember that YSUPD is patrolling campus 24/7; remember that a few criminals and a few incidents do not represent the university as a whole.
