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11/3/10 Com. Appeal (Mem. TN) B1

2010 WLNR 21996732

 

Memphis Commercial Appeal (TN)

Copyright 2010 The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN

 

November 3, 2010

 

Section: Metro

 

Gap exists in campus reporting of crimes -- College figures don't always match reality

 

Richard Morgan and Grant Smith /

 

The University of Mississippi's Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies tells students that 1 in 6 college women are victims of  rape  or attempted  rape , with the college years being a time of quadruple the normal risk.

 

  But that's not what Ole Miss tells the federal government.

 

  At Ole Miss, a campus of 15,932 students, there has been one reported sexual assault since 2007, according to federally mandated crime statistics the university provides the U.S. Department of Education.

 

  That's in spite of the fact that sexual assault cases account for half of the 25 or so women who have sought help at the Ole Miss Violence Prevention Office, which opened in January in the campus women's center.

 

  "We would love to see rape numbers go way up," said Linda Abbott, the sole full-time staffer at the violence prevention office. "People think that would mean more violence was happening, but we know it would just be more reporting, better reporting."

 

  It would be difficult to imagine reporting going down . Across the state of Mississippi, there were eight forcible sexual assaults reported among all 173,888 students in 2008, the year with the most recent statewide available data. That's not 1 in 6; it's 1 in 25,000.

 

  Among Tennessee's 426,396 college students for the same time period, there were 31 forcible sexual offenses reported; about 1 in 15,000.

 

  Analyses of the gulf between reports and reality expose a kind of security paradox: Either the numbers are wrong, or the people are.

 

  Sexual assault often leaves a stigmatizing fog in its wake, say the people involved - students , police officers, counselors and administrators. That might complicate reporting, they say.

 

  But what about other crimes ?

 

  Statewide in Tennessee colleges, there were 57 reported motor vehicle thefts in 2008, 1 for every 7,500 students. There were 69 aggravated assaults, about 1 for every 6,000 students.

 

  At the University of Memphis, which touts itself as the safest campus in the state, over the past three years there has been only one hate crime of any kind (against disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation): That was vandalism motivated by religion.

 

  There were no statutory rapes or weapons-law violation referrals recorded in that time, but there were six forcible sex offenses in the past three years and six weapons arrests .

 

  On a campus where enrollment has been ballooning to almost 23,000 students , there has been an average of three arrests for violations of liquor laws made each year for the past three years. Only about 2,700 students live on campus.

 

  The statistics exist because of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. That federal law, passed in 1990, came about after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old freshman at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, was raped and murdered in her dorm in April 1986. Her parents discovered that the university had chosen not to disclose the fact that 38 violent crimes had happened on the campus in the past three years. Now every college in the country that receives federal student aid has to submit an annual report that lays out basic crime numbers .

 

  The Clery statistics include liquor-law violations but exclude public intoxication and DUI offenses. They include motor vehicle thefts, but not larcenies; aggravated assaults, but not simple assaults or stalkings.

 

  "On the face of it, the numbers are a joke," said Howard Robboy, a sociologist at the College of New Jersey who is also an advisory board member of Security on Campus, the nonprofit watchdog group set up by the Clerys. "You could say it's error or incompetence but it's so systemic, intentionally, all the time, that it's too remarkable to be real or true."

 

  He continued: "There are serial rapists in every student body. But where are they? What college wants to be the first to admit they have a problem there? So students don't get punished; they get educated. And all of a sudden a felony isn't a felony; it's some educational opportunity for community service or academic probation or a warning - basically nothing."

 

  He contended the problem is exacerbated by the fact that two populations he described as "troublesome" - Greek students and athletes - are reliable sources of alumni donations at many campuses.

 

  Robboy said elite colleges tend to be more comfortable reporting crime statistics because they perceive their reputations to be immune to tarnish. The venerable Vanderbilt University in Nashville reported seven forcible sexual assaults in 2008 - a quarter of statewide cases.

 

  "I know these systems," said Robboy, who taught at Ole Miss from 1977 to 1981 and again from 2001 to 2002, "and this comes from the top. The cops are just doing what they're told. It's a conspiracy of silence."

 

  When Calvin Sellers took over as police chief at Ole Miss in 2008, he noticed that his predecessor had been reporting stolen property as "lost." Sellers took a more direct approach, and the consequence has been that under his rule, burglaries, or burglary reports, have almost tripled .

 

  "The thinking was that it wasn't stolen unless you watched it being stolen, and that was wrong," Sellers said. "Because, if that were the case, nobody's ever had their car stolen."

 

  Sellers, who has been at Ole Miss since 1986 , explained that "this is my last job. I'm not going anywhere after this. So I'm not trying to make my résumé look good. I don't want things to be good. I want them to be true, honest.

 

  "I'd rather someone not understand things and say that crime went up under my watch than to be the guy who let crime go unnoticed or unchecked."

 

  Bruce Harber, police chief at the University of Memphis, describes the Clery statistics as "a report card to see how we're doing."

 

  Citing a near-perfect score by a recent Tennessee Bureau of Investigation audit, he added: "We're very safe here. Our numbers are what they are."

 

  During the course of this analysis by The Commercial Appeal, seven computers were stolen from The Daily Helmsman, the U of M student newspaper; a death threat aimed at U of M business students was investigated in cooperation with the FBI; and students were warned to be on alert after a rash of neighborhood robberies - two in the space of 10 minutes - as well as a Halloween weekend house robbery in which duct-taped students were pistol-whipped.

 

  "We're all fighting different battles," said Harber.

 

  --------------------

 

  U of M's police force, by the numbers:

 

  500 video cameras

 

  34 officers

 

  11 guards

 

  10 cars

 

  8 bicycles

 

  2 T-3 electric chariots

 

  Look up crime statistics for campuses in Tennessee and Mississippi at commercialappeal.com/data/campus-crime/

 

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Word Count: 1074

11/3/10 COMAPL B1

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