Campus Crime Stats Deceiving, Officials Say Inconsistencies In Reporting Standards Can Make Comparisons Difficult

After weeks of scrambling to assemble crime data, regional college officials say the federal Department of Education’s database on campus crime doesn’t accurately reflect student safety.

“The numbers can be deceiving,” said Tom McGill, chief of the Eastern Washington University Police Department.

Several of the institutions found problems in the reporting system, including differences in the definition of crimes and inconsistent reporting standards at universities.

Thousands of post-secondary schools nationwide rushed to meet the Department of Education’s October deadline for putting statistics into the national database.

Gathering statistics, in the first place, became a hassle.

“They kind of sprung this stuff on us,” said Linda Jusza-Schaff, records specialist for Washington State University’s police.

She spent days hand-searching her files for the information.

In addition to the police statistics, the report asked for information on referrals to nonpolice entities such as counselors, advisers and even coaches. “We have not collected that kind of information,” Jusza-Schaff said.

It took Jeffery Hart, Gonzaga’s director of security, 40 hours to comply with the complicated reporting requirements.

The complex rules started with the 1986 murder of student Jeanne Clery at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Her death prompted a national law requiring public and private schools to report crime on and near campus.

Clery, 19, was raped and killed in her dorm room by fellow student Joseph M. Henry, who got into the building through propped-open doors. He was later convicted and sentenced to death.

After her murder, Clery’s parents learned that 38 violent crimes had occurred at the university over a three-year period, but none of them had been made public.

Because Lehigh was a private institution, those incidents could be downplayed or even go unreported.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act was passed in 1990, but it wasn’t until the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 that the Department of Education was required to collect and review the crime data and report to Congress.

For secondary schools, poor record-keeping and failure to make a crime public knowledge could mean a $25,000 fine.

Now that the statistics have been sent to the Department of Education and posted on a Web site, some are wondering whether these numbers show anything substantial.

“I wouldn’t put a lot of credence in the site. The reporting is not uniform,” said Hugh Imhoff, information officer at WSU. “Some campuses don’t report certain crimes like rape because it’s handled by the local police.” WSU, on the other hand, does. “Anything that happens on our campus, of course, is covered by our cops,” he said.

But life for a student can be much more dangerous in larger cities than in a town like Pullman.

“In Seattle, if there’s a rape across the street from the school, it doesn’t get reported by the school,” Imhoff said.

The numbers in the report are often no real reflection of crime on campus. For example, the report says the University of Idaho had seven reported rapes in 1997. But that isn’t entirely accurate, said Kathryn Bernard, a spokeswoman for the university. Those rapes were actually reported at the North Idaho College campus in Coeur d’Alene, where the UI has an annex, but because of the reporting rules, the crimes showed up on UI’s site, as well as NIC’s, Bernard said.

“Statistics only mean something if you really know what they’re talking about,” said Capt. Cameron Hershaw, Moscow Police Department’s campus division commander for UI.

Another example would be the hate letters sent to Gonzaga law students in 1997.

Based on the numbers posted on the Web site, Gonzaga hasn’t experienced any hate crimes. All the spaces under that category have been filled with zeroes.

The reason for this discrepancy is due to the way the Department of Education interprets hate crimes.

A crime of hate involves both bias and hurting or injuring someone. That’s why series of racist letters sent to Gonzaga law students in 1997 was categorized as malicious harassment.

Since the schools are responsible for filling in the blanks next to the various categories, it’s possible that colleges and universities have different interpretations, Hart said.

There’s a category called “Forcible sex offenses.” Since it’s not specific about the type of sex crime, people often assume it’s rape, McGill said.

But that’s not always the case. Eastern’s five sex offenses included two cases of voyeurism, two cases of child molestation and one indecent exposure.

And not all sex-related crimes are reported to university police or other school officials, notes the “University Crime Statistics,” a pamphlet published by the Eastern Washington University Crime Statistics Task Force.

Eastern’s local statistics also show that the number of aggravated assaults near campus was 74. “Local,” in this case, isn’t Cheney, where the main campus is located. McGill interpreted “local” to mean the area around Eastern’s branch campus in the heart of downtown Spokane.

The statistics are especially misleading when you compare one school to another.

“There’s context to be set,” Hart said. “You can’t interpret the numbers in the same way.”

Look at the burglary statistics for 1999. Whitworth College shows no burglaries, but Eastern had 10 and Gonzaga experienced 14.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Gonzaga is unsafe, but rather reflects the more urban setting of its campus.

“We’re also blessed with our location and our secure campus,” said Whitworth security supervisor LeRoy Fantasia, describing Whitworth’s site in north Spokane. “It’s closed and isolated. There are no public streets in proximity and that helps us.”

The way numbers are compiled also differs from school to school. If an EWU officer responds to a call from someone who smells marijuana in a residence hall, that would be recorded under drug abuse violations even if no drugs were found.

In contrast, Gonzaga security would have to find a student with drugs in order to count that as an offense.

“You’re comparing apples to oranges,” Hart said.

Although this is the first time schools have been required to send campus crime stats to the Department of Education, all universities and colleges have been mandated by Congress to publicly disclose incidents of crime for the past decade.

The law is a good one, Hart said, but it sometimes “loses sight of common sense.”

The data entry was also a confusing process, McGill said. It took him a week to figure out where to put the different numbers.

“I’m glad they’re showing what’s going on,” McGill said, “but if you don’t pay attention, you might misinterpret what’s there.”

It’s important to look at the whole picture when choosing a college or university, Hart said.

Call the number listed on the Web site’s information page for each school, he advised. Talk to a live person about what really goes on on campus.

Most people in security are serious about maintaining safety. At Gonzaga, for example, Hart sends e-mail to students, staff and faculty about crimes that take place on or around the campus. He also posts signs on buildings, notifying the community about recent incidents.

“(The Web site) is a consumer tool, but it’s one among many that people should use in making decisions,” said Jane Glickman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education. “We’re hoping that by having the data accessible, people can use it.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: ON THE NET

Campus crime statistics can be found at www.ope.ed.gov/security