It’s quite possible I’m taking this school comparison thing a bit too far. But anyway, one of the things I’m looking at are the Clery Act statistics – mandatory crime statistics published by each college.
After watching the CNN special on campus assaults - I am worried about how truthful schools are in reporting sexual assaults and crimes.
Then I read this article that said that “Ninety-one percent of college campuses disclosed zero reported incidences of rape in 2014. With about 11,000 campuses disclosing annual crime data, an overwhelming majority of schools certified that in 2014 they did not receive a single report of a rape.” http://www.aauw.org/article/clery-act-data-analysis/
I was surprised to read so many schools don’t report any crimes? How is it possible that New York University and Boston University report no crimes in their residence halls? Is that believable?
Do you think one can draw any realistic conclusions from these figures? I don’t believe I can protect my student completely but I also don’t want to be foolish.
I’d pay way more attention to the services for survivors than what statistics are reported.
I worked on a project in 2014 that canvased every single 4 year university in my state and it was appalling how little resources there were at the vast majority of colleges and how hard it was to find the ones that did exist.
I cannot imagine digging that deep into college analysis. Better to spend time preparing student to handle situations since they can occur whether there are statistics showing things or not.
My daughters could go to the safest schools in the world, extra lighting, no men at all, and I’d still want them walking in groups. I’d prefer to prevent the assault than worrying about how the schools deals with ‘the boys.’
I lived in what I considered a very safe place. In one year there were 7 murders within a mile of my house, 4 at restaurant robbery, 1 a drive-by in a parking lot, 1 a man robbed coming out of his office, and 1 a break in of a house. I still considered it a safe neighborhood, but I took more care when parking my car, when walking, in locking my doors.
I suspect that the number of incidents reported is often more a reflection on the ease with which students can report assaults, awareness on campus and whether an administration encourages reporting than the safety of a particular campus.
@1966Parent - you should ask about it, out loud and in a group, at every college visit or tour you go to. Your kid might get sick of it, but you will be able to tell a lot about the school from the response you get. How startled did the person you asked seem? How defensive? Did their answer back up the 0 claim or was it more realistic? How quickly did they try to hand off your question to another department? Do they automatically assume that you are asking about rape by non-student strangers or not? It should be somewhat illuminating.
@1996Parent where are you getting the data for NYU? For “forced sexual offenses” they reported 11 for 2012, 9 for 2013 and 14 for 2014. A few in on campus residence halls and some in off campus residence halls or in other areas. Not sure if the data is out for 2015 – think it has to be filed by October of this year.
There were also a ton of alcohol and drug related crimes reported in the residence halls. Thinking you might have been looking at the report for NYU Abu Dhabi – that report is clean. As is the report for the engineering school’s campus in Brooklyn.
Here is link to Washington square campus (pg. 25):
I agree that you can’t easily compare Clery numbers on sexual assaults among universities. Big schools have lower numbers per capita because more students live off campus, and a dozen other variables that make comparison almost impossible. One aspect that has not been mentioned are the reporting avenues – schools where most of the reports go to Student Health or Psych and Counseling may have lower numbers because doctors, psychologists, and pastoral counselors are not required to report statistics. On the other hand, if you have a good center on campus that provides victim advocacy and support services, the numbers will be higher because those centers are required to report statistics. I agree with the first comment that a parent is better off looking on the school website or the Annual Security Report to see whether there are adequate resources. In particular, in addition to good victim advocacy, I would look for institutions that provide strong bystander intervention training (Green Dots is outstanding, but there are other equally good ones).
Another factor that might have an impact on numbers is the ease of reporting anonymously – as long as there is some indication that the assault occurred on-campus (or at an off-campus greek house or any university-controlled property) those reports will be included in the Clery numbers. Encouraging anonymous reporting also helps colleges get students to support services even if they’re unwilling to disclose details.
Activism on campus can have an impact on numbers too – in 2013, Swarthmore’s numbers jumped to 89 (from less than 20) because there had been a concerted effort to encourage reporting of prior assaults (all Clery crimes are reported for the year the report was received, not when they occurred).
Sexual assault and domestic violence are grossly under-reported everywhere. The problem is actually larger outside of colleges and universities for the 18-25 age group. Even schools with the highest numbers know that they are only hearing about a portion of what has actually occurred. I doubt that there are more than a few schools that are actually hiding numbers (even if you’re cynical, there really isn’t any benefit to say that there were five or six fewer assaults); the Baylor situation wasn’t about keeping numbers down, it was about a culture of protecting athletes and a “boys will be boys” attitude that has little to do with the folks who kept their crime statistics.
By the way, a university finding of no responsibility or even a not guilty jury verdict does not remove a report of rape from the Clery numbers.
@HarvestMoon1 - Thx for the link. It is all very confusing how schools report the data. I find it unbelievable that NYU reported no crime in residence halls (Burglaries - which are forced) not to mention thefts. NYU says only 1 burglary happened in residence halls in 2012, 0 in 2013 and 1 in 2014. Maybe that is true but I find it doubtful.
Nationally - I just saw data published by College Parents of America linked here:
"The disparity between Clery Crime Reports and the Uniform Crime Reports is massive.
To put matters in perspective, the UCR recorded approximately 73,545 university and campus crimes in 2014; Clery only reported approximately 2,000 of those. Students are being misled by Clery crime reports, and in turn these students believe they are much safer than reality."