There was a significant decrease in the number of on-campus burglaries at the University in the year 2000, but the number of on-campus arrests for liquor law and drug law violations more than doubled from the previous year, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.
On Nov. 19, the department posted crime statistics from 6,269 college campuses for the 2000 calendar year on its campus crime statistics Web site.
According to the site, there were 43 cases of on-campus burglary reported at the University in 1999. In 2000 that number fell to 29. However, there were 185 on-campus arrests for liquor law violations and 71 for drug law violations in 2000 — up from 70 and 24, respectively, in 1999.
Associate Director of Public Safety Tom Hicks called the numbers an accurate reflection of crime on campus, but cautioned that statistics don’t always tell the whole story.
“(Those numbers) are as accurate as crime statistics are,” Hicks said. “But you have to look at any crime statistics with a certain degree of realism.”
Hicks said that the increased number of liquor and drug law violations could be because of the fact that Department of Public Safety officers were stationed in residence halls last year. This could also account for the drop in burglary numbers. However, he was quick to point out that crime is often cyclical.
“We would like to think that it’s because of increased patrols and presence,” he said. “But burglary is the type of crime that goes up and down.”
Colleges have been required to disclose crime on and around campuses since 1990, when Congress passed the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act. In 1998, the law was amended to expand reporting requirements and renamed the Clery Act in memory of Jeanne Ann Clery, a 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room on April 5, 1986. The Clery Act requires all Title IV eligible schools to publish and distribute an annual campus security report. The DOE is required to compile statistics from those colleges and make them available to the public.
Last year, in response to the amendment, the department’s Office of Postsecondary Education began posting crime statistics on the Internet. The process of posting results went more smoothly this year than last year, but some feel there are still problems.
“We’re still seeing some inconsistencies in the data,” said S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, a nonprofit campus-crime watchdog group.
One problem with the statistics posted on the site, Carter said, is that many schools omit disciplinary actions and judiciary referrals in their reports. Those referrals, which are most often handed out for liquor and drug law violations, can in some cases double the number of statistics in a given category. The University gave more than 400 disciplinary actions/judicial referrals for liquor law violations in 2000 and more than 200 for drug law violations, but it made fewer than 200 liquor law arrests and only 71 drug law arrests.
Hicks said the reason for this discrepancy is that many universities have drug and alcohol regulations that differ from municipal codes, and that some institutions prefer to handle such matters internally, rather than turning students over to law enforcement officials.
Carter said that while the OPE Web site is “getting closer” to accurately depicting crime on campus, the DOE needs to give schools clearer requirements. Also, he said, a strong enforcement mechanism for its reporting policy needs to be developed.
The University reported no murders, no manslaughters and no weapons violations between 1998 and 2000 — the three years the DOE has required statistics. The statistics can be viewed in their entirety on the OPE Web site at ope.ed.gov/security.