EDITORIAL: Crime reporting must improve

But the answer is not for the University to unilaterlly change the way it reports data to the government. Does this make any sense? Of course not. But a bill recently introduced in Congress by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and Penn alumnus, does not fully solve the problem. Though Specter's bill is a step in the right direction, it does not put to rest the issues at the heart of the crime-reporting debate. While the current law requires colleges to report crime as being "on campus" when it occurs in property owned or used by the institution for educational purposes, the proposed bill would expand that to include certain facilities "within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution" that are not used for education. For Penn, this would mean the inclusion of Spruce and Walnut streets, as well as the food court, for example. But if a crime occurs at 40th and Spruce streets, is it really fair for it to count? The fact is that Penn and other urban schools are at a fundamental disadvantage. There are -- fortunately -- no clear divisions between the University and the community. This raises the question of whether any rule can adequately represent crime at Penn and other urban schools in a numerical form. Yet the purpose for providing statistics to the government is for parents and potential students to be able to compare crime across the board. It is impossible to do that under the present system, simply because campuses are so different from one another. The Department of Education should convene a committee of campus crime experts and a diverse group of universities to collaborate on a crime-reporting system that truly makes sense. Critics accuse the University of finding loopholes in the law to come up with the lowest possible crime figure, and a DOE review released earlier this year found a few relatively minor violations of the current law at Penn. For Penn to go above and beyond the law and institute its own crime-reporting procedure that includes areas that are currently defined as "off campus" is not the answer. It would make comparisons between institutions worthless. Instead, the University and its critics should work with lawmakers and other schools to come up with a coherent policy. Campus crime is not a trivial matter, and neither is the method in which it is reported.