Socal evils – including crime, thefts, and prostitution – have dogged and worried a Ho Chi Minh City university neighborhood, where tens of thousands of students from across Vietnam study for their first degree, for a long time despite the management’s efforts to protect them.

Over 45,000 students, lecturers, and other university staff living in the so-called “University Village,” where the country’s top-tier universities are located, in Thu Duc District are still obsessed with the murder of a University of Economics and Law student early last month. 

Two young people stabbed Nguyen Thanh Trung, 22, to death after Trung, a law major, accidentally stepped on one of their feet at a grocery store on May 5. The two gave themselves up to the police five days later. 

Losses of personal belongings happen quite often in the neighborhood even though patrols have been carried out since November last year.

Nguyen Quoc Tuan, a second-year student at a sports university, said that he has lost two cellphones since March while Tran Minh Lap, another University of Economics and Law student, reported that burglars broke into his rented room and stole three laptops in April.

Break-ins take place almost everywhere in the village, Lap complained.

In a more serious incident, a female student narrowly escaped being raped by a thief in the middle of last month.

Dinh Thi Tien, a senior at the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, recalled that a burglar stole into her room and snatched her cellphone in the small hours of May 18.

Tien managed to drive him away with a small knife she often keeps at hand for self-defense when he was oppressing her throat and was about to rape her.

One day later Nguyen Thi Thuong – Tien’s schoolmate – and her roommates discovered another burglar trying to get into their room from the roof and shouted for help. He quickly fled away then.

Tran Viet Thang, vice chief of the center which supervises the village, told Tuoi Tre that security guards have been sent out to patrol the area since November last year.

The center added a flying squad of police officers and militiamen in May in order to ensure security and safety inside the village. But thefts still occur here and there, he addmitted.

And that is still not the end of the story. The village is, what's more, surrounded by ‘happy-ending’ massage parlors, hairdressers, and street walkers.

It is a common sight that young girls sporting scanty clothes sit in front of the shops, waving at passers-by to offer their service every day.

Prostitutes usually line the roads leading to the area at night when many students are on their way home from evening classes.

Students here have to learn to live with all these social evils, Le Tuong Vi, a female student, said.

“We rarely go out late at night, carefully locking the doors, and keeping an eye on strangers,” Vi elaborated. “I hope that the police will take more measures to protect us.”   

Phan Van An, a student who once fell prey to thieves, added that students themselves should also form patrol teams and take turns to guard their rented rooms.