THE DARK SIDE OF THE IVORY TOWER 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. Not until the late 1980s – some 250 years later – did campus crime suddenly become an issue on the pub- lic 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 col- lege students and the ivory tower itself, while simultaneously convincing policy makers to take action against the problem. Readers from a range of disciplinary interests, campus security professionals, and informed citi- zens will find the book both compelling and valuable for 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 of Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, research reports, and presentations and coedited two previous books on campus crime. Professor Sloan has been a Research Assistant at the Institute for the Study of Children and Families at Eastern Michigan University, as well as Visiting Professor of Criminal Justice at the universities of Alabama and West Florida. 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. She has authored or coauthored more than 150 scholarly publications and has coedited four volumes that focus on victimization issues. Professor Fisher was an honorary visiting scholar at University of Leicester, Scarman Centre, in the United Kingdom; a visit- ing scholar in the Division of Prevention and Community Research at the Consultation Center at Yale University School of Medicine; and a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-12405-8 - The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower: Campus Crime as a Social Problem John J. Sloan III and Bonnie S. Fisher Frontmatter More information