Having grown up on Chicago's South Side, James L. Tierney '96 knows a tough neighborhood when he sees one.

He had already been mugged once before he came to Cambridge.

After arriving at Harvard in 1992, he did not expect to be mugged again.

But last October he was attacked and beaten outside his Mather House residence.

As Tierney walked home with his girl-friend on a Friday night in October, five men confronted the couple and asked for money.

When Tierney refused, one of the men punched him in the face. He tried to fight back, but the five men began to beat him repeatedly and one of the assailants pulled out a knife.

The attack left Tierney with a cut over his right eye and multiple bruises on his face and head.

But it did not change his perception of Cambridge.

Like other Harvard students, Tierney maintains that the city by the Charles is relatively safe.

"I still consider Cambridge to be a lot safer than the neighborhood I went to high school in," Tierney says. "It was an unfortunate incident that could have happened anywhere."

Although local law enforcement officials agree with Tierney's view, they urge caution, especially when traveling the city's streets late at night.

"You make a serious mistake if you think Cambridge is a safe place at night," says attorney Burton E. Atkins. "It's not."

Cambridge was the ninth most violent city in Massachusetts in 1995, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

However, law enforcement officials stress that the city is relatively safe--arrests were well below the average for cities with populations of approximately 100,000 residents.

"Cambridge is unique," says Sergeant Detective Patrick G. Nagle, acting spokesperson for the Cambridge Police Department (CPD). "It's hard to compare to cities of similar size."