Panos Papanikolopoulos, sophomore
“This campus is very safe. We’re in a nest within a nest of a city… I don’t think there’s that much crime to begin with here. They [prospective students] should not have any problems coming to school and worrying about safety. This school is really safe.”
Javier Abonzo, junior
“For myself, I feel relatively safe. I guess the only times would be on weekends when people start drinking and walking down the Boulevard to get to their houses. I don’t want to get into a situation with a drunk person, obviously that would be bad.”
Harry Freeman, first-year
“There are a few of the SMU police people that I do not feel safe with, but other than that, I don’t feel the crime rate is bad or the crimes that do happen, of course, are definitely not significant enough for me to even consider them to be crimes.”
James Maillet, first year
“I’d say generally yeah, but sometimes at night it can get a little scary around some parts of campus. I always get dropped kind of behind that McElvaney area or walking back from Moody parking garage—that’s kind of scary sometimes. It’s obviously dark outside, but like a lot of the times, there’s some people, kind of creepy people lurking around. I see cars that I wouldn’t normally see on campus. Stuff like that.”
Sarah Behrens, senior
“There’s normally police officers driving around. Sometimes the edge of the campus, of course at the bookstore not so much, but everywhere else… I mean I walk around at 3 a.m. all the time, so I’m fine with it.”
“On campus, I have left even my laptop, my calculator… I have left my stuff out for hours. I seriously go somewhere and purposely go “I’m going to leave my stuff and be back later,” and I know it’ll be there later.”
Zi Yang, senior
“I guess when you say ‘Do you feel safe on campus?’ we think from outside, like the SMU police protect us from crazy weirdos not from SMU [students].”
“Maybe we’re just lucky. I’ve never gotten anything stolen. But then, you know, I hear… I actually heard that they warn you at the end of the semesters the thefts actually increase. So by the end of the semester, I start getting more careful.”
