Violence on College Campuses

On college campuses today, there is a lot of violence. Violence occurs for many reasons, its unfortunate but true. One of the main reasons that violence accurs is because 90 percent of violence on college campuses is alcohol related. That is one of the many reasons why violence occurs.

There have been reports of increased violence on U.S. college campuses since the early 1980s. Alcohol-related problems have included vandalism, fighting, injuries, and rape. However, as in the past, crime on campuses frequently was not reported to authorities or not divulged by institutions. Therefore, it is difficult to know if there has been an increase in incidences or just increased reporting. Roark (1987: 367) has suggested that "although comparative data from previous years are difficult to obtain, it seems to many student affairs professionals that there is an increase in violence on campuses." One study reported that residence hall advisors mediated more physical confrontations between students in the mid-1980s compared to previous years. College campuses are communities populated with individuals at high risk for unintentional and violent injury, the vast majority of whom are single and experiencing freedom from home and parental supervision for the first time. Despite broad-based concern about violence on campus, accurate information about the scope and nature of this problem is hard to come by. Nevertheless, there is general agreement that since the 1960s crime and violence, often exacerbated by alcohol consumption, have been increasing on America's college campuses. A college campus is a learning community where these acts may seem unthinkable; however, campuses are not immune to the same violent outrages occurring in secondary education or in the public workplace. Youth violence involves almost all of our social institutions, values, beliefs and attitudes When we hear students disengage with institutions or people and threaten to harm themselves or others, we may be able to prevent the potential for large-scale serious violent crimes. College campuses should begin to engage in discussions on prevention methods and prepare ways to react to this new level of violence.Society has been devalued by and desensitized toward youth violence. In 1996, 805,000 serious violent crimes involved juveniles and 740,000 crimes victimized juveniles (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family