Recent crimes upset sense of safety on campuses

KANSAS CITY, Mo.— Tuition might not be the most troubling concern for parents sending sons and daughters off to college. A disturbing pattern of violent crime has erupted across the nation’s campuses – from Yale University, where a female graduate student was strangled, to the University of California at Los Angeles, where a chemistry student was stabbed repeatedly in a lab. While saying campuses almost always are safer than their surrounding communities, Jonathan Kassa of Security On Campus Inc. acknowledged the headlines can create the opposite impression. “This has been a very uniquely deadly and brutal first semester, so there is concern,” said Kassa, the executive director of the nonprofit organization, which seeks to reduce campus crime. This month at Sacramento State University in California, a student was beaten to death in his dormitory by a bat-wielding roommate.