Henry Maddox
Campus Crime
In the 1980s, violent crime began to interrupt the daily lives of college students across the United States. As the reports of crimes escalated, the crimes became more and more concerning. Among the crimes, sexual assault, murder, battery, robbery, and other violent crimes showed a big increase and universities began investing in protecting their student population, often after lawsuits were initiated. However, due to the fear of ruining the image and reputation of the schools, leading to lower application rates, these institutions still were hesitant to report on-campus crime.
A major issue with addressing campus crime has been the lack of unreliable data. Universities would often fail to report crimes to the appropriate authorities, leading to a lack of true understanding of the actual crime on campus. While some institutions claim crime rates were stable, others viewed and reported an increase in physical and sexual violence. These crimes on campus fell into two main categories, those crimes committed by students against students and those crimes committed by outsiders against the student body. This rise in crime was often connected to the consumption of alcohol. According to Mr. Schafer of the University of Colorado, “I would say 100 percent of our sexual assault cases are alcohol-related” (Purdum, 1988, p. X). Along with alcohol, the crime also followed the fraternities and athletic groups on campus.
In response to the concerns of crime on campus, universities began to implement stronger security measures, including educational programs on sexual misconduct, better lighting across campus, and more security officers on patrol. However, the debate continues to this day on the responsibility of the college or university to prevent campus crime. In 1984, the murder of Jeanne Clery, legislation was introduced to require universities to report crimes on campus. This move acknowledged that these once thought of “safe spaces” were not immune to crime, and proper reporting could benefit the safety of students. While this may have helped reduce campus crime during the time, current crime reporting on sexual assault still remains a significant concern in higher education.
While the 1980s saw an increase in violent crimes on campus and then saw the university system work to decrease these crimes, “a substantial proportion of college students are sexually assaulted” (Fedina et al., 2016, p. 4). Recent studies have shown that sexual victimization is still occuring at an alarming rate. Estimates of the true number of sexual assaults vary greatly, as the reporting of the nature of sexual crime is ill defined. As pointed out in the NIJ report, specific student populations are at greater risk. This includes women, underclassmen, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ students. Many institutions are still underreporting crime, as the fear of damaging reputation and losing money, even with the legal mandate and legal responsibility of reporting crimes.
Efforts to combat sexual assault on campus have included legislation, like the Cleay act, and the national campaign “Its on Us”, an advocacy campaign to create a safer campus. While this is a good step, the NIJ report elaborates on how there is a need to standardize and track campus crimes. It also calls for campuses to track underrepresented groups better, and for colleges to provide better support for students who have been a victim of sexual assault. While these security measures have evolved, debate on institutional responsibility continues.
To better understand the reporting nature of the crimes, a study was conducted on the five largest campuses in Florida that are four year institutions and include on-campus housing. This study included only the main campuses of these universities. First, sexual misconduct at these campuses all started at different starting points, but dipped significantly during the covid-19 pandemic. In my study, I calculated Sexual Misconduct by combining incidents of fondling, incest, rape, and statutory rape into a single measure. However, all universities except for Florida State University (FSU), increased in the number of reporting sexual misconduct on campus. FSU saw an increase in 2020 and then peaked in 2021. Following this, there was a rapid decline in the number of incidents reported. Second, the number of assault cases reported between 2018 and 2022 and were averaged over those years. The University of Florida (UF) led the way with 30.71 assaults per 100,000 students over the study period. This seemed to be a huge outlier, as the rest of Florida schools were under 7 assaults per 100,000 students. Finally, the study looked at the number of burglaries over the same time period and averaged the number of burglaries per 100,000 students. I used burglary instead of robbery, burglary involves unlawful entry with intent to commit a crime, while robbery requires direct confrontation and force.. FSU and UF were the highest numbers with FSU having an average of 52.84 burglaries and UF having 46.44 burglaries per 100,000 students. All other studied universities were under 19 burglaries per 100,000 students. Overall, these numbers would indicate that UF would most likely be the campus in Florida with the most crime reported. These measures were the number of total crimes as per the total student enrollment times 100,000. This allowed for the data to be normed against the overall population
At the national level, the universities in Florida often align with or are higher than the national crime average. For example, when comparing sexual misconduct, UF and FSU are above the national average at 27.5%. Likewise, for burglary FSU and USF are above the national average at 24%. Lastly, UF was the only university above the national average of 5-6 aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents.
The article from the Times talked about the major violent crime problem on campuses across the United States and was elaborated on by the NIJ report on sexual assault on campus. The data research provided demonstrated a continued view of crime on campus that aligns with both of these reports. The question of whether these crimes are reported accurately is still up for debate.
References
U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Campus safety and security data analysis cutting tool.
Office of Postsecondary Education. Retrieved from https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/
Purdum, T. S. (1988, April 10). The reality of crime on campus. The New York Times. Retrieved
Fedina, L., Holmes, J. L., & Backes, B. (2016). How prevalent is campus sexual assault in the
United States? NIJ Journal, 277, 26-30. National Institute of Justice. Retrieved from