“Quinnipiac is the safest place in the world,” said Dave Barger, assistant chief of Security, with a chuckle.

Quinnipiac tries to have a cozy campus atmosphere, but how safe are Quinnipiac students?

Barger said that Quinnipiac is one of the safest college campuses nationwide. He explained that to measure the safety of students, local police and campus statistics are combined and a circle is drawn on the map.

The Quinnipiac circle covers some parts of Cheshire and all of Hamden, which are both reasonably safe towns. A larger circle is drawn on the map that includes New Haven, which has a significantly higher crime rate than Hamden. The inclusion of New Haven’s crime rate lowers the school’s safety ranking.

Campus Security is working around the clock to keep campus safe.

“We have extra officers on Thursdays through Saturdays, lights at night and guards 24 hours a day. The Hilltop lot has “code blue” [phones] which immediately ring to [security headquarters] so we know where the problem is, as well as video monitoring for all the parking lots,” Barger said.

Security isn’t the only factor in making Quinnipiac a safe place.

“It is a cooperative effort with Residential Life, the online pass system, and the RAs who are the eyes and ears,” he said. “The most common problem is unregistered guests. The majority of unregistered guests are friends of students, or friends of friends. The greater part of the time they are students from other colleges.”

A big problem for campuses nationwide is secluded dark areas, such as parking lots.

“Occasionally you find vandalism as in any parking lot; a mirror or an antenna ripped off,” Barger said.

According to Barger, video monitoring and security in the campus parking lot helps keep vandalism and other crimes low.

In contrast, Eric Marco, a junior journalism major, explained that he had to investigate different cars for a class assignment. He said he walked around the Hilltop lot and peered into different cars and Security was nowhere to be found.

“I was expecting someone to come up to me,” Marco said. “Now I feel my car isn’t very safe, and I even thought about moving it directly in front of the guard.”

On the other hand, some students feel as safe as they think it is possible to be.

“I feel pretty safe here,” said Rosanne DeAngelis, junior physician assistant major. “But the Whitney Lot at night can be kind of creepy. It’s by the woods and there are not a lot of lights.”

“I feel like even if there is a security guard there, one person can’t keep tabs on everything that could happen. Even though they have those gates, sometimes they don’t work and it’s easy to sneak in,” DeAngelis said.

Aside from parking lot concerns, there is not much talk about campus assaults. However, it does happen, and it is usually among classmates.

“We’ve had several incidents were students were assaulted, usually students fighting amongst other students, not serious assaults,” Barger said. “People tend to settle things physically instead of verbally.”

According to securityoncampus.org, 80 percent of campus crimes are committed by a student upon another student.

Although there have been incidents, some students do not give it much thought.

“I’m never scared of that, people are pretty nice here,” Marco said.

“Quinnipiac is like a little town. It’s bound to have disagreements and people doing good and bad things to each other,” Barger said.