Every August, thousands of families move a son or daughter into a dorm and drive home trusting the school has thought through its safety plans. Most parents never ask what that trust is actually built on.
We have three kids of our own, and we’ve made that drive home many times, telling ourselves the school had it handled. As a lawyer who has spent decades handling negligent security and premises liability cases, I know that assumption isn’t always true.
When tragedy happens, a pattern shows up again and again. A school knows an area has a history of assaults or break-ins. Lighting is poor. A gate doesn’t lock properly. Security staff is understaffed, undertrained, and not actually patrolling. The institution’s defense is almost always that it was unforeseeable. It rarely is. The warning signs were usually sitting in an incident report or in crime data at the local police department.
On-campus security isn’t a brochure line item. It means people actively monitoring entrances, walking the grounds at night, and responding when something looks wrong — not a guard parked in a booth watching a monitor. Before move-in, parents should get direct answers to a few questions:
- Who patrols the dorms after midnight, and how often?
- Are entrances locked and monitored, or can anyone with a swipe card walk in behind a resident?
- What is the campus’s actual history of reported incidents — not the summary in the admissions brochure?
- Has the school made changes after a past incident, or did it stay quiet and hope it wouldn’t happen again?
- What are the surrounding streets like at night near bars and social gathering spots?
- Is there a parent social media group monitoring what’s happening on campus?
Schools are required to disclose crime statistics under federal law, and that data is public. Read it before you sign a lease or housing contract, not after.
Off-campus risk deserves just as much attention, and it looks different than it did even five years ago. Students move around late at night relying on rideshare apps, often alone, often without telling anyone where they’re going. Uber and Lyft offer trip sharing, driver verification, and an emergency button — but those tools only work if a student actually uses them. Both companies have faced thousands of documented assault claims nationwide, often involving young women who were under the influence. Before the semester starts, make rideshare safety a real conversation: share trip status with a roommate, verify the license plate before getting in, sit in the back seat, and trust your instinct if something feels wrong.
None of this is about scaring families or assuming the worst about a school. It’s about recognizing that safety is shared, and that a college takes on a duty to the students living there. When that duty is treated as a formality instead of an obligation, real people get hurt.
If your student is heading to campus this fall, don’t rely on assumptions. Ask the school directly what security looks like after dark. Look at the crime log. Talk through rideshare habits before it’s a 2 a.m. decision made alone. Colleges that take security seriously will welcome those questions. The ones that deflect them are telling you something too.
Marty Dolan is a respected trial lawyer and founder of Dolan Law, Chicago. He is a long-time resident of Clarendon Hills with over 30 years of experience handling personal injury and wrongful death cases. He currently serves on the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee and was the 2025/2026 Chair of the DuPage County Bar Association Alternative Dispute Resolution Section.
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