My first beat as a campus reporter in college was the police blotter. Every week, I visited the campus security office, went over the list of incidents, and wrote up the funniest cases for the newspaper. Usually, it involved a dim witted stoner getting caught with a doobie in a public area or a kid who was found passed out on the lawn after a night of jello shots in a dorm room party. The only disturbing items on the list were the suicides and suicide attempts. I was not allowed to report on those.

All in all, it was pretty mild stuff. If my kid was entering the college of my youth, I would have very few concerns. I would tell him to avoid funnels and jello shots and doobies in the college commons, but I wouldn’t be terribly alarmed. Are things very different today?

This morning, my first reads were about sexual assaults on college campuses and the heroin epidemic in New Jersey. Is this activity by a few outliers that has been blown up a sensationalist media or should I really be freaked out?