BU’s Charles River campus has been the site of numerous safety concerns in the past week, with incidents ranging from the collision of a car and a pedestrian on Commonwealth Avenue to the reported armed robbery of two students outside of the Fitness and Recreation Center. Other incidents nearby, including a robbery on Beacon Street last Friday, have raised concern among students about safety on campus.
Although incidents like these should certainly be cause for concern, they should not come as a surprise. In a major city like Boston, crime is a problem that can never completely be eradicated. When choosing to go to college in a city, students need to be prepared for the risks that they could potentially face and need to be aware in all that they do &- from crossing the street to walking home at night.
We’ve all been lectured on the dangers of stumbling drunkenly through the streets of Allston in the middle of the night. It is common sense that wandering around alone at night is dangerous; it doesn’t need to be said again. But what people rarely caution us on is the risk that we face every day that merely comes with the territory of living in a big city. Although Boston is by no means the most dangerous city in the country, it has its fair share of crime.
Although the danger may be small comparatively, that does not mean that students should disregard any concern for safety when walking to and from class. BU may be in a fairly safe and well-policed part of the city, but last week’s incidents prove that no area is immune to safety issues. It is important to always pay attention to what is going on and to act in a careful manner.
Students need to be aware of their surroundings at all times &- not just at night, not just in the bad parts of the city and not just when traveling alone. Although there is no reason to live our lives in constant fear of attack, we also shouldn’t take for granted that we will always be safe on campus. When a school is as integrated into the city as BU is, the threats are always there. As students who chose to come here, we need to be responsible enough to deal with those risks.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
