The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower: Campus Crime as a Social Problem

A cursory reading of the history of U.S. colleges and universities reveals that violence, vice, and victimization - campus crime - has been part of collegiate life since the Colonial Era. It was not until the late 1980s - some 250 years later - that campus crime suddenly became an issue on the public stage. Drawing from numerous mass media and scholarly sources and using a theoretical framework grounded in social constructionism, The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower chronicles how four groups of activists - college student advocates, feminists, victims and their families, and public health experts - used a variety of tactics and strategies to convince the public that campus crime posed a new danger to the safety and security of college students and the Ivory Tower itself, while simultaneously convincing policymakers to take action against the problem. Readers from a range of disciplinary interests, campus security professionals, and informed citizens will find the book both compelling and valuable to understanding campus crime as a newly constructed social reality.

John J. Sloan III is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology and Chair of the Department to Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama of Birmingham. Bonnie S. Fisher is Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and a Research Fellow at the Center for Criminal Justice Research at the University of Cincinnati.