Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Defining Safety For Universities: The Slippery Conceptual Slope, Pam Jenkins

DRU Workshop 2013 Presentations – Disaster Resistant University Workshop: Linking Mitigation and Resilience

In this presentation, we address the issue of the fragility of campus safety. The uniqueness of a college campus creates a context for safety that requires an intentional and specific understanding. Campus life for many is no longer (or perhaps never was) ‘an ivory tower’— a place separated and protected from the rest of the community. However, many still have the attitude that a campus is not like the real world in the United States. And in fact, colleges and universities are often much safer and more open than communities around them. Yet, ask any student affairs director or safety …