The New York Post e-Edition

School has poor marks for safety

Kerry J. Byrne

Columbia University has one of the worst crime and safety records in the nation, according to reports on higher education.

The Morningside Heights school’s record on student safety came into question when Davide Giri, 30, a Columbia grad student from Italy, was stabbed and killed Thursday night in Morningside Park, a magnet for students a few blocks from the university campus.

Tessa Majors, 18, a student at Columbia’s Barnard College, was stabbed to death two years earlier, also in Morningside Park.

“Take responsibility for this,” scientist Roberto Donnianni, 40, demanded of the school where he once studied. “At Columbia University, it’s the best students in the world. You have to protect them.”

On Saturday, Donnianni and his wife, Giulia Papiani, 38, stopped at a sidewalk memorial dedicated to Giri at West 123rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where the Columbia computer-science student had bled to death.

Columbia reported 412 safety incidents in 2019, the last year for which such data is available, according to College Factual, which provides university data to prospective students.

Only 4.5 percent of the 3,990 colleges and universities nationwide that reported crime and safety data recorded more incidents than Columbia, College Factual reported.

Major crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault or arson comprised 15 percent of the incidents reported at Columbia; violence against women made up 9.7 percent.

“When a student goes to school, I feel like they are entitled to a certain level of safety which has not been provided to them,” graduate student Max Crownover told the Columbia Spectator.

He laid flowers at the crime scene and returned later holding two signs that read, “Clean up our neighborhood,” and, “Columbia do something,” according to the student newspaper.

A Columbia rep refused on Saturday to answer questions from The Post about safety standards.

The school e-mailed students on Saturday saying that “NYPD has decided to further enhance security by temporarily assigning patrol inside [Morningside] Park 24 hours a day.”

Federal data also paint a sobering picture of safety at Columbia. The Democrat and Chronicle, citing federal Department of Education data, reported that the university of 31,000 students logged a 45 percent spike in crime in 2019 over the previous year, going from 57 incidents to 83.

Only 41 schools nationwide reported more crime in 2019, the data showed.

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2021-12-05T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-05T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://nypost.pressreader.com/article/281608128721242

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