For three years I lived less than a block from the house where UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was killed in Downtown Madison.

I never considered the area unsafe.

Recent events have led me to wonder if I was a little naive.

But as a recent UW-Madison graduate, I 'm not going to be reduced to living in fear. By most measures, Madison is still a safe city.

Clearly, the recent string of murders in Madison is cause for concern. I can 't imagine the pain and sense of loss felt by Brittany 's family, friends and neighbors. Consequently, it 's not surprising that many people are frightened.

But I 'm worried that Madison may be succumbing to hyped public fears about campus safety, especially in light of the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech University.

Fear may help to explain the university 's well-meaning but misguided response to recent crime concerns. Instead of focusing on effective policing and long-term crime reduction, officials are responding with gimmicks that simply serve to minimize the school 's responsibility in the event anything were to ever happen.

Considering many students don 't check their e-mail every day -- let alone every few minutes -- what good are campus e-mail alerts? And the newly established text message alert system can only issue warnings after an incident begins.

Many efforts also have been made to find and treat troubled students before they act out violently. But unless someone explicitly says, "I 'm going to kill people, " what can be done? We can 't pre-emptively lock up students just because they seem a little creepy.

When it comes to campus-related violence, we need to keep some perspective.

UW-Madison crime rates are not any higher than crime rates on campuses of comparable size elsewhere.

Moreover, campuses in general are relatively safe places.

In any given year you have almost the same chance of dying in a school shooting as you do of dying from excessively hot tap water, according to the National Safety Council.

Americans are almost 10 times more likely to drown in their bathtubs than be killed in a classroom.

More people died of lightning strikes than school shootings last year.

All of this leaves us with an uncomfortable reality: Some risks are unavoidable.

Residents should stay smart and be vigilant.

City and university officials should worry about problems they can actually deal with, such as reducing crime Downtown and making sure our 911 call center is effective.

For starters, solving one or all of the recent Downtown murders would go a long way toward calming fears.

When the relative peace of Madison is shattered by murder, it is understandably frightening. But we can 't allow a culture of fear to cloud our judgment. That won 't help.

And it certainly won 't make us any safer.

Arnold is a recent UW-Madison graduate in journalism and the summer intern for the State Journal Opinion page.