In “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite,” Free Press, 2014, William Deresiewicz writes that elite American schools corrupt the souls of their students …. but he fails to mention that they also endanger their bodies.

Recently, I looked at some crime statistics for Yale University, the premier academic seat of East Coast liberals – the Ivy League that trains the Ivy League, so to speak.

You’d think all that high-powered thinking would have had some impact for good where it most counts –  at home.

Not a chance.

Not only is New Haven, Connecticut, a haven of crime, Yale’s immediate environs are no bower of peace and prosperity.

The Yale Daily News, struggling to portray the campus’s successful spin on the subject as some kind of structural improvement, admits that Yale richly deserves its reputation as a poster-child for violent crime.

“Yale and New Haven’s reputation for being dangerous likely originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crack-cocaine made the city an entirely different place. During that time, when the city was the site of a drug war, there were three times as many shootings in the city as there are today.

And Yale’s campus was not as safe either. There were over 1,000 major crimes — including motor-vehicle theft, larceny and rape — on Yale’s campus each year in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Crime on campus peaked in 1990 with 1,439 major crimes. The image of a dangerous Yale is epitomized by the murder of Prince, who was fatally shot in the chest on Feb. 17, 1991, on the steps of St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue.

“When 19-year-old Christian H. Prince died in an attempted robbery — just a block from the university president’s house — whatever remained of the students’ sense of protection around campus died too,” The New York Times reported two days after the murder in a story headlined: “At Yale, Fear and Anger Join Grief Over Slaying.”

The murder shook the campus: “That was a bad time,” Deputy University Secretary Martha Highsmith said. “It was a horrible time.”

After the incident, the University spent millions of dollars installing new lights and blue phones and adding security personnel. But, just seven years later, Jovin was fatally stabbed.……

…In 2007 and 2008 combined, New Haven reported 2,690 violent crimes for every 100,000 residents, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports. This number is comparable to the crime rates in two of Connecticut’s other major cities, Hartford and Bridgeport — 2,377 and 2,338 respectively. (As defined by the FBI, violent crimes include murder, forcible rape, robbery rape and aggravated assault.)

The average U.S. city of comparable size to New Haven had only 1,246 violent crimes per 100,000 residents — less than half as many.”

The average US city, of course, is no Swiss resort. If New Haven is TWICE as dangerous as the average in a field that includes such  vice- factories as Detroit, DC, Baltimore,  Atlanta, and Memphis, the situation is dire indeed.

Point two. The article relays perceptions of safety at Yale, focusing mainly on undergraduate students who live in carded security in campus dormitories.

But the main target of crime at Yale is the hapless graduate student living off-campus, who has to walk home in the dark.

One  comment on the article punctures the propaganda of the campus rag:

“This is the problem when you have school buildings spread out across a dangerous city and Yale does absolutely nothing to crack the town-gown animosity, give money back to a poor city and its citizens (many of whom are Yale employees), and protect students. Ms. Le’s death is a tragedy, and it is even worse to hear that it may have been committed by a member of the school community. But I will say this: New Haven is a dangerous city and Yale doesn’t care. Wait two weeks, let the news crews drive away, and I can almost guarantee that things will be back to normal for Yale security–putting all of us at risk. I commuted to Yale my last two years after a shooting and a stabbing on my corner. . . I spent thousands of dollars on commutation. I may have missed out on some social experiences, but my safety was–and still is–worth every penny. And for the liberals who claim that New Haven is safe: Go find a grad student living in New Haven Towers and ask them what a walk home at 8 PM is like. Offer to take the walk with that person, and maybe you’ll get a realistic view of the world.”

The comment makes a passing reference to a third point about crime on some campuses. Its source in the animosity between the locals and the “privileged” outsiders – the old town- and- gown conflict. To this hostility can be added racial feelings and class anger, as well as a dollop of xenophobia.

A 2010 analysis by the liberal Daily Beast put Yale in the top 25 most dangerous colleges in the US, a country where colleges abound in the tens of thousands.

And Yale made the top 25 again, in 2012, according to The Business Insider.