National campus crime rises

Showing a slight rise in overall incidents in 1999, the U.S. Department of Education has released its second annual report of nationwide crime statistics for colleges and universities. The report found an overall increase of one percent in campus crime incidents. Although the number of murders and aggravated assaults was down in 1999 from 1998, there was an increase in four other major categories. The number of reported forcible sex offenses, robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts all rose. Arson statistics were collected for the first time. Liquor law violations comprised the single largest number of offenses, with 25,933 arrests and 108,846 student disciplinary referrals. Bill Danks, interim deputy chief of investigations at the University Police Department, said that because Penn will be reviewing the DOE reports on Monday, he cannot comment on the statistics until then. "Until then, we cannot make an intelligent comment on that report," Danks said. The Clery family -- whose daughter Jeanne was sexually assaulted and murdered by another student on Lehigh University's campus in 1986 -- helped persuade Congress in 1990 to pass a law requiring colleges to make their crime statistics public. An amendment was added to the law in 1998, requiring schools to submit their crime reports to the Department of Education. The Clery family also set up Security on Campus, Inc. -- a non-profit watchdog organization -- to make sure schools were more forthcoming with crime statistics. Daniel Carter, vice-president of Security on Campus, said the increased number of total crimes was due to better reporting by both victims and schools. "I think that the alcohol incidents in the [report] are probably due in large part to an increase in enforcement... and increased arrests," Carter said. "The amount of alcohol consumption has not changed as significantly as the statistics might indicate." Carter also noted that many on-campus crimes can be linked to alcohol. Carter said that urban and rural schools have similar crime statistics. "Most campus violence is student on student, so it's really irrelevant of the outside environment," he said. However, this report was the first to require crime statistics for both campuses and their surrounding areas. In the past, schools including Penn had used loopholes in reporting regulations to distinguish between "on-campus" incidents and those in areas that were not technically on campus property. "Penn had a situation where armed robberies adjacent to campus were being excluded [from reports] but were being handled by campus police," Carter claimed. "Part of your increase [in reported incidents] is due to situations like that." Although Carter said that high campus crime rates worry the parents of prospective students, University spokeswoman Phyllis Holtzman said Penn's crime rates don't seem to be deterring many students from matriculating. "The University's number of applications seems to go up, and the number of people who want to go to Penn seems to go up every year... and that kind of speaks for itself," Holtzman said.

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