York, PA.-- Crime and safety reports for a college or university campus can be a little overwhelming and even confusing. These reports are relied upon when prospective students are choosing a school.
Many of these reports show sexual assault numbers increasing at area campuses.
What could be even more confusing, is that officials are saying the increase is actually a good thing.
Jessica Cable is an orientation leader at York College says, “It definitely concerns me just that the amount of rapes reported are increasing.”
From 2014 to 2015, more than half of the college campuses in our area reported increases in sexual assaults on campus.
Ed Bruder is the Director of campus Safety at York College. He says, “when you see an increase in numbers, it is not because it is necessarily more incidents occurring, it should be an encouraging sign that people are coming forward and getting help and assistance.”
He says because of these increases and different requirements, resources for sexual assault victims have expanded on the campus.
Those resources include counseling services, medical attention and options for reporting a sexual assault—from who a victim can report a crime to, to how they can pursue criminal charges…
Bruder says, “the support systems and reporting was always there, but now we are doing more than ever to educate them about how to take advantage of those resources.”
He says this is due in part to the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2014, along with the strict requirements of reporting sexual crimes under the Clery Act.
“When the violence against women act came out, there was a lot of requirements for us to start teaching and training our staff, our faculty and our students about the importance of reporting these incidents.”
Bruder says, for York College, when a victim comes forward, administrators offer as much support as possible.
“We empower the survivor, it is all up to them where they wanna go with it.”
Students we spoke to on York College’s campus say they don’t worry about their safety because they have been educated on how to stay safe and what to do if they are a victim of assault.
Sarah Weber is a Freshman at York College, she says she feels safe, especially on campus, “and you know that campus safety is always available as well.”
Abbey Walton is also a Freshman at York College and she says they had adequate education on safety. “They went through a lot of videos and explained a lot about safety—we had a whole program about it during orientation.”
Being educated and armed with the knowledge of just how safe a college campus is can come through orientation. but what if a potential student is just in the application phase?
There are two reports you can see from each campus, but decoding the reports, and understanding what you are looking at in those reports needs a little help.
One is the Clery Act statistics. The federal report is of rules and regulations named after Lehigh university student murdered in 1986, the other is the uniform Crime Report or U-C-R.
Andrew Powell is the Director of Campus Safety at Elizabethtown College. He breaks down the differences in the report, “the UCR, we are using state law definition, the Clery Act- we are using definitions defined by the Clery Act itself.
Powell says the numbers you see on the UCR versus the Clery Act will be different, so be sure you are comparing apples to apples when looking at these reports.
“UCR uses crimes that were reported to campus security, and the Cleary Act are crimes reported to campus security, and what are called ‘campus security authorities’ so those are other employees of the college—RAs, Res-Life, Student Conduct, Title IX coordinator, that also received reports so that explains the difference.”
While the requirements for each report may alleviate some of the confusion—it still may not be enough to explain to someone just looking at colleges, why sexual assault reports are up.
Powell says, “admittingly, it is a complex law. I think just looking at the statistics table isn’t enough.”
Bruder and Powell encourage both students and parents to reach out to administrators on prospective college campuses, to ask questions about the crime and safety reports.
Bruder says, “if I had a son or daughter looking at college, I would certainly look at their annual security report—that is the whole purpose, that we have to open up and show what occurs on our campus.
We looked at 11 different state and private universities across Central Pennsylvania. 6 of those had higher reports of sexual assaults from 2014 to 2015.
The Crime and Safety reports are filed annually at every college campus—those numbers are generally finalized in the fall.
Here are the links to the reports from the different universities used in our report:
YORK COLLEGE: https://www.ycp.edu/media/york-website/campus-safety/campus-safety-pdfs/2016-Annual-Security-Report.pdf
MILLERSVILLE: http://www.millersville.edu/police/police/stats.php
MESSIAH: http://www.messiah.edu/download/downloads/id/412/Annual_Safety_and_Security_Information_Report.pdf
WILSON: http://www.wilson.edu/sites/default/files/uploaded/16-103_SD%20CampusSafety-ClearyReport_0.pdf
SHIPPENSBURG: http://www.ship.edu/Police/Safety_Information/
FRANKLIN & MARSHALL: https://www.fandm.edu/uploads/files/389440690421510552-2016-clery-annual-safety-report.pdf
ELIZABETHTOWN COLLEGE: http://www.etown.edu/offices/security/files/Annual-Security-Fire-Safety-Clery-Report.pdf
CENTRAL PENN: http://www.centralpenn.edu/media/305337/2015_annual_security_reportkacorrections30aug2016.docx