UT-Austin Deemed State's Safest Campus In New Survey

AUSTIN, TX — Despite two separate murders of students on campus, the University of Texas at Austin has been deemed the safest school in Texas in a new survey.

In its Safest College Campuses in 2018 report, Your Local Security, an ADT-authorized premier provider dedicated to providing the most up-to-date security tools and information needed to build a safer home environment, ranked UT-Austin as the safest campus in Texas.

"Safety is fast becoming a major determining factor for which university or college a future student will choose to attend," researchers wrote. "With a slew of recent reports citing school shootings, sex trafficking, and lack of food, we couldn’t help but wonder about overall college campus safety in the U.S. "

In compiling the report, researchers analyzed the most recent crime data sets provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety Security Survey and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data, according to a press advisory. The results were then calculated and ranked using the information provided by those two reports.

By that reckoning, Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis was deemed the safest college campus in the nation, according to the study. Another key finding showed the Midwest performed well for college campus safety, with eight of the nation's safest college campuses located in that part of the country.

Researchers limited their search for universities that had at least 1,000 enrolled students, including schools offering two– to four–year degrees. Analysts also included private, public, non-profit, and for-profit campuses.

The types of crimes that were the focus of the study included incidences of property crime, violent crime, and violence against women, then weighed the crimes by severity and divided the school’s crime by enrollment to calculate total per capita crime, researchers wrote.

The showing comes after the May 2017 fatal stabbing of Harrison Brown, at the at the hands of a fellow student outside the university gymnasium. And in April 2016, freshman dance major Haruka Weiser was sexually assaulted and killed as she walked back to her dorm room after a night class.

To read the full report, click here.

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>>> Images via Your Local Security, used with permission