The Safety of Students and faculty at the University of Maryland

Your University
University of Maryland Student and Faculty Concerns’ Report
Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
December 8, 2019
Chapter I
Introduction
School is regarded as a second home for students therefore safety concerns should be the least of their concerns apart from learning. Yet, an increasing number of crimes that happen in school and universities has been a widely familiar issue. According to Brantingham and Brantingham in 1994, a college campus is utilized at any part of the day, even at night (Jennings, et al 193). However, staying inside the campus too late arouse a sense of fear of campus crime victimization (Jennings, et al 193). Campus crimes do not cause fear alone, as Tseng, Duane, and Hadipriono mentioned, campus crimes also “…undermine the quality of the
the learning environment, …also reduce the positive activities of people associated
with the campus” (Jennings, et al 192).
We, the researchers, would like to address concerns about campus safety. For this study, we will be focusing on the University of Maryland, College Park or UMD. This university has an alarming increase in certain campus crimes for the past three years. This is also despite the university’s attempt to solve or lessen campus crimes. Hopefully, at the end of this research, we can come up with solutions to help decrease the rate of campus crimes such as robbery, sexual assault, burglary, violence, and so on.
Chapter II
Review of Related Literature
General Perception
According to Ross and Rasool (18), “[u]niversity campuses are generally perceived to be relatively secure places…” and yet based on their own research and multiple other studies regarding campus crimes, this has been proven unlikely. From recent events, there has been an alarming increase in gun violence including in K-12 schools. According to David Riedman and Desmond O’Neill’s data from 1970 up to this year, 2018 and 2019 hold the highest count of K-12 school shooting incidents which are 116 and 95, respectively. These numbers increased rapidly from 2017’s record of 54 shooting incidents. Before that, the last highest record was in 2006 with 59 said incidents. Moreover, Riedman and O’Neill also recorded the total number of injured and killed victims during school shooting incidents. Still, 2018 and 2019 have the most recorded victims during the incident with 177 and 116, respectively. The scope of Riedman and O’Neill’s research, however, specifically indicated that their data pertains to “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason” irrespective of the time whether it happened during school hours or of the reason if the shooting was a direct attack to the school.
Nonetheless, this issue has sparked an urgency on the citizens of the United States to call for the end of gun violence. For instance, due to the mass shooting that happened in a high school campus at Parkland, Florida where 17 people were killed (Chuck, Johnson, and Siemaszko), millions marched to condemn gun violence and to call out the government for action which was led by the organization March ...