[gerbal]

Most large American Universities are not part of the surrounding town or city. They are in effect their own municipalities.

[mbreese]

Some of the literally are their own municipalities.

Two examples: The University of Notre Dame is in Notre Dame, Indiana, which happens to be surrounded by South Bend, Indiana. Same with Stanford... which is technically in Stanford, California.

[semi-extrinsic]

Even more literally, the city of College Station, Texas, is a city built around the main campus of Texas A&M. Thus the name.

[mbrookes]

Ah, interesting - thank you! So it's the civic structure rather than a particularly lawless student base. :) Not so bizarre then - just different!

[arethuza]

Is there anywhere else that has the US model? I worked on a UK university campus for a few years and I don't think they had any security guards (certainly I never met any and I was in and out of buildings at all hours) let alone armed police!

[pjc50]

The really ancient ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Constabul... (I think that may be the last left).

[aninhumer]

I think UK universities mostly include limited security in their general pastoral support, rather than having dedicated security guards. So there's someone who can e.g. ask a stranger loitering on campus at night what they're doing, but anything serious will be handled by the police.