I heard a podcast recently about Clery reports so I decided to look up a few schools that are on our tentative list. All four LACs I checked had 8-10 annual rapes. Yikes!! I didn’t expect that on campuses with only 2000 kids. Seems like a high number. Anyone out there with kids in college already have any advice on how to take numbers like this?
I looked up a few other schools (Northwestern had 8, UW-Madison had 11). What’s up with the LAC stats? The percentage of rapes per student is so much higher at the smaller schools I checked. Anyone have any insight? Kind of freaking me out.
Well, there are two possible interpretations of these results. Either:
(1) LACs have much higher rates of sexual assault and drug use than large universities, or else
(2) the LAC environment promotes more much openness and candor about reporting such problems.
A related question that you might want to consider is whether those numbers for large universities are perhaps unrealistically low.
Consider, for example, that Baylor reported low rates of sexual assault prior to the recent rape scandal. Since the scandal, their reported numbers have soared. Does this mean that things have gotten worse at Baylor since the scandal broke? No, they’ve gotten better – before the scandal, victims were afraid to come forward, and now they are speaking out.
@Corbett, I think there is little chance that students at LAC’s are acting any differently than the student population as a whole; what is more likely is that they have a more robust outreach process.
That would be my interpretation as well. In other words, students at LACs aren’t more likely to be victimized by sexual assault than students at large universities – but the LAC students are more likely to report it.
@Corbett@Chembiodad thanks for the feedback. I think I might take a look at different colleges’ policies on sexual assault. Some schools seem better at making the kids feel like they are supported when reporting. I think some even have pro-active meetings on campus to talk to students about these issues.
I looked at Clery reports for every school my D applied to. Most of her schools were LACs, one was Brown. I was shocked that Brown had far more reported sexual assaults than any of the other schools proportionately. Is Brown a hotbed of sexual predation? I don’t think so. My takeaway was that there are fewer students reporting these crimes at some schools, and more students reporting them at others, and a lot of this has to do with how the administration handles these issues. Or, schools are not being honest about numbers, which I don’t want to think is true.
There are allegedly higher rates of sexual assault at colleges with more Greek participation. My D applied only to colleges with low or no Greek participation. One stat I was concerned about was crimes against students off campus. And of course I was concerned about sex crimes. Parents and kids have to decide what is most worrisome, or if it’s a deal breaker.