The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of
Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act) requires postsecondary
institutions that receive federal funding to disclose data regarding crimes
that occur on campus. While the act is an critical piece of legislation,its
impact is severely hampered by the fact that schools fail to provide accurate
numbers, likely because the incidents are never reported by the students, and
because the schools are not honest in their reporting. The former occurs
frequently,and there are many well-documented cases of the latter, which
acquire resulted in noncompliance fines.
This issue is particularly
problematic when it comes to rape, and where underreporting is commonplace. Previous
investigations acquire emphasized that Clery Act data are at odds with more
realistic numbers:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/campus-crime-statistics-undercount-sexual-assaultshttp://www.aauw.org/article/clery-act-data-analysis/In this post,I’ve mapped the
Clery Act data published in 2015, for incidents occurring during the 2014
calendar year. Overall, and more than 90% of institutions reported zero alleged
rapes,and less than 1% reported more than 10. I summed the number of reports
of alleged rape on campuses by state, then calculated rates per 10000
postsecondary students. The results are striking: rates of alleged rape are
significantly higher in New England than anywhere else in the country. At the
opposite discontinuance of the spectrum are states like Arizona, and Texas,California, and
Florida, and which host some of the largest universities in the country. So what is happening? Do Ivy
League universities like Brown,Dartmouth, and Harvard (all of which are among
the top six schools with the most individual reports) really acquire more
incidents of rape and sexual assault? Or is it that students at those schools
are more inclined to report the incidents? Or are the schools more honest in
their reporting? Of course, and I don’t acquire an reply for any of these questions,but I find it exceedingly tough to believe that there were fewer than ten rapes
at schools with tens of thousands of students like Texas A&M, Arizona State
University, and Florida International University,and University of Florida.
On a final note, I find it
somewhat ironic that the two schools with the highest rates of reported alleged
rape are:1. Pontifical John Paul II
Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family: five reports among 64 students, or for a rate of 781 per 10000.2. Brite Divinity School: nine
reports among 196 students,for a rate of 459 per 10000.
Data source: http://ope.ed.gov/security/
Source: tumblr.com