Students should realize the difference between campus and DeKalb safety ratings before deeming our university as an unsafe space. On Sept. 29, CollegeChoice ranked NIU as one of the top-50 safest large universities in the United States.

Many factors come in to play when it comes to this statistic, such as on-campus crime, rates of discrimination, a strong Violence Against Women Act presence and the programs put in place to help and protect students. On-campus is considered the property owned by NIU and the property NIU has interest in like fraternity and sorority houses. While I agree that our campus is safe, I do sometimes feel fearful about the area around us.

The University of Chicago is a good example of a similar situation. Crime rates are much higher in Chicago but not necessarily on the actual campus. In Chicago, students may not hear of all of the crime that occurs because it happens so frequently in a larger area and may be seen as the norm there, said NIUPolice Chief Thomas Phillips.

DeKalb is not a huge metropolis like Chicago and our media coverage is very focused on our local area, especially the Northern Star; it could be very likely that a robbery may end up on the front page of our paper, whereas it would probably would not in Chicago.

Students receive alerts not only for on-campus incidents but also the local areas where many students live.

“The goal of our alert system is to proactively notify students; we want to keep you aware” said Phillips.

Our police department constantly alerts students simply to keep them aware and safe – not in hopes of instilling fear.

“There are two categories [of alerts] – we’re mandated by law to notify our community when there is a true life threatening emergency that is impacting our campus community,” said Phillips. “That’s called an emergency alert. The second one is called a timely warning which is when something has happened either on our community or in the extended area that may impact students…”

NIU crime and DeKalb crime should not get lumped together in people’s minds. The neighborhoods where many students tend to live is not owned by NIU and, therefore, not considered in the ranking NIU received by CollegeChoice. Not every university has high crime rates, but no area is perfect and so there is guaranteed to be some crime.

The DeKalb Police Department breaks our town into three zones.Zone one is where police respond to most, said Deputy Chief John Petragallo of the DeKalb Police Department. This zone covers most NIU property and includes the neighborhoods near Greek Row, Ridge Drive and Edgebrook Drive, as well as the Regent Drive and Fotis Drive area. In 2015, 22,752 calls were made into the police department from zone one, whereas only 10,555 came from zone two and 8,703 in zone three.

I believe that what is known as zone one is the area that many students are thinking about when they consider NIU to be unsafe. However, these are in the city’s jurisdiction. Students have a right to be worried about this area but it is not taken into account when directly discussing the safety of NIU as a university.

NIU’s campus is safe and the ranking is something we as a community should be very proud of; the surrounding area should not diminish our reputation.