THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610140031
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 206 lines
Old Dominion University last year reported a 25 percent increase in crime - the largest jump for any four-year Virginia college - according to statistics compiled by the Virginia State Police.
The total number of crimes at ODU rose from 317 in 1994 to 397 last year, according to the police statistics. The increase occurred almost entirely in the category of larcenies - thefts of property, such as a bike or backpack - which went from 282 to 357.
William ``Cliff'' Rice, Old Dominion's public safety director, said he couldn't explain the increase, but didn't think it reflected a dramatic decline in safety on campus: ``You don't have a real grasp on why. People leave things out. They don't lock their doors, they don't lock their drawers.''
Since 1990, colleges have faced stepped-up requirements to report crime, to help give students a heads-up about the likelihood of being attacked on campus. But a growing chorus of politicians, students and advocates of crime victims are questioning whether the numbers reflect reality.
The schools that are reporting the highest numbers - such as ODU - aren't necessarily the most dangerous campuses, they say, and the ones with the lowest figures can't be assumed to be the safest.
``Every college newspaper editor that we have dealt with in the last few years has said they feel certain that there are criminal incidents on campus that are not being reported in these statistics,'' said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington. ``At many schools, they'll have zeroes across the board. . . . . Unfortunately, the ones who are doing a good job (reporting) are suffering'' by comparison.
All Virginia's state-supported four-year colleges - and a handful of private and community colleges - annually report campus crime incidents to the state police. The state police, in turn, send the numbers to the FBI, which compiles nationwide numbers in its annual Uniform Crime Report. The crime report for 1995 was released Saturday.
That isn't the only outlet for finding out about college crimes. Under the Student Right-to-Know Act, passed by Congress in 1990, all colleges receiving federal aid must publish a yearly brochure for current and prospective students detailing campus crime statistics and strategies for maintaining safety.
In the past two months, in Virginia and Washington, critics have intensified efforts to ensure that colleges report accurate numbers:
In August, Richmond lawyer Eileen Wagner filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that Virginia Tech's rape statistics were ``knowingly inaccurate.'' The department is investigating the allegation.
Wagner represents former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala, who sued two football players who she said raped her three times in a dorm in 1994. A federal judge during the summer dismissed the suit, but Wagner is appealing.
The rape was not included in the university's brochure listing 1994 crimes. ``The school was knowingly out of compliance with the Student Right-to-Know Act,'' Wagner said last week. ``The information that we get now, as far as sex crimes are concerned, is worthless.''
Brzonkala reported the incident to the Virginia Tech judicial panel to initiate disciplinary action, not to the campus police, Wagner said.
Under education department guidelines, schools must include in their brochures rapes reported to campus offices other than the police - such as a women's center. But Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said the university believed that the law would not require reporting the Brzonkala incident because the athletes were not convicted of rape in the campus judicial proceedings. However, one of the players, Tony Morrison of Chesapeake, was found guilty of ``sexual misconduct.''
Last month, the U.S. House passed a resolution calling on the federal Department of Education to ``play a more active role in monitoring and enforcing compliance'' with the Right-to-Know Act.
``This law was enacted for a reason,'' said Rep. Bill Goodling, R-Pa., chairman of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee. ``Students were being raped, murdered and robbed on our nation's campuses, and this information is being hidden from other students.''
In Virginia, the 1995 state police statistics also have raised questions among those familiar with campus crime. The school that reported the most rapes on campus was Mary Washington College, with seven. Mary Washington also had the highest per-capita crime rate based on the number of reported incidents, with 41 total crimes per 1,000 students.
Mary Washington, in rural Fredericksburg, had about 3,700 students in 1994-95, according to federal enrollment data. By contrast, several universities with at least four times as many students - some in much more congested urban areas - listed no rapes. They include ODU, the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth. Virginia Tech listed two.
``It strikes me as a little odd,'' said Donald H. Smith, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at ODU. ``If you take U.Va. and ODU together, that's a very large population. And they report no rapes? That's pretty unrealistic.''
Even Rice, the Old Dominion police chief, said: ``I'm not that naive to believe that there's no date rape going on at ODU.'' He said that many females are reluctant to report rapes to police, but that ODU is trying to encourage them to do so.
So just how safe are campuses in Virginia?
Bill Pelfrey, professor of criminal justice at Virginia Commonwealth, said the rate of violent crimes on Virginia's campuses is far lower than that in Virginia's towns and cities. And, he said, there is no reason to believe the campus numbers are less accurate than those reported by municipal police.
The colleges, with close-knit communities and high ``pedestrian traffic,'' are virtually ``safe havens for those who work, visit or are educated there. we don't want to say, `Dash from your classroom to your car because you will get assaulted.' We believe that's statistically very unlikely.''
Smith, the ODU professor, is somewhat more dubious. ``I don't think I've ever been on a campus where there wasn't concern for controlling and manipulating the reporting of statistics,'' he said.
``I tell students this community of 16,000 students is no different than any other community of 16,000 in any urban area in the country. You shouldn't expect to be free from crime. . . . Any college campus that tells you it's safe is just lying to you.''
Even if colleges scrupulously follow the law, they don't have to report all crimes committed against students. Schools are required to report them only when they happen on campus.
So, for instance, when Gerard Edwards was killed in his dorm room at Norfolk State in 1994, that was listed as a murder at NSU. When ODU student John Torpey was killed in 1992 at 45th Street and Colley Avenue, two blocks from campus, it wasn't counted as an ODU murder.
``Depending on how you define incidents, you can create or dispel perceptions,'' acknowledged W. Samuel Sadler, vice president of student affairs at William and Mary, which had the second-highest per-capita crime rate in the state, at 40 crimes per 1,000 students.
The college also listed the most assaults of any Virginia school - 21 - and the most cases of arson - seven - according to the police data. Sadler said that may reflect its tendency to cite incidents that might go unreported elsewhere. An ``assault'' at W&M, he said, might be a fight between two students that led to fisticuffs, and an arson is reported any time a student lights up a piece of paper.
Perhaps the most closely watched category is rape. Critics say rape statistics may reflect administrators' attitudes on the subject: Do they encourage students to report rapes to campus police or through other channels at school?
That makes a difference in the state police and FBI numbers. Though the on-campus brochures must include rapes reported to campus outlets other than the police, the state police and FBI statistics list as rapes only those incidents investigated by police, said Norma Poole, an analyst for the state police. So rapes that are reported only to a campus women's center will never be listed in the state and FBI reports.
At Mary Washington, which led the state with seven rapes, campus Police Chief Greg Perry said, ``I would like to think that the victims of this heinous crime had confidence in their police department, that they knew they were going to get the help they needed, and that's why they chose to come forward.''
Kelly Regan, a 21-year-old senior at Mary Washington, said the police force's ``third-person policy,'' in which students may anonymously report to police rapes that happen to others, encouraged the reporting of rape. ``I think the police have a very strong presence on campus,'' she said. ``I know a lot of officers by name. Maybe it's the fact that students feel connected, and they feel more comfortable reporting something that happens.''
At Tech, which listed two 1995 rapes in the police report, Brzonkala was encouraged by officials to report the incident to campus judicial officers, not the police, said Wagner, her lawyer. ``Students are steered away from filing incident reports and are encouraged to stay within the (campus judicial) system,'' she said.
But Hincker, from Virginia Tech, said, ``We do strongly encourage all the young women'' to report rapes to campus police. ``But we know for many reasons they don't. It's simply embarrassment; it's too late after the fact. Sometimes they have their own private reasons.''
There are other examples of campuses providing inconsistent or incomplete information:
The number of crimes listed in the police reports and campus brochures often don't match. At ODU, for instance, the brochure handed to students generally has lower numbers: 21 car thefts, instead of the 26 reported to police. William and Mary's brochure uses bar charts with no gradations between zero and 50, so it is difficult to figure exact numbers for crimes.
Colleges are not legally required to report larcenies - the largest category of crimes - in their brochures. Nevertheless, some schools, such as William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth, include that category in their brochures. Others - including ODU, NSU and Tech - don't.
That omission gives students a false sense of security, said S. Daniel Carter, Southeastern regional vice president of Security on Campus, a national group that pushed for the Student Right-to-Know Act. ODU's brochure, for instance, lists 10 categories of crimes, none of which has more than 25 total incidents. It does not say that 357 larcenies were reported on campus that year.
A VCU press release issued in August was headlined: ``VCU boasts second-safest campus in commonwealth.''
The release was based on an analysis of violent crime rates at Virginia campuses conducted by Pelfrey, the criminal justice professor. The press release noted that among ``campuses reporting incidences of violent crime,'' only one college, Longwood, had a rate lower than VCU's. But it did not mention that two other schools - Christopher Newport University and Virginia Military Institute - listed no violent crimes at all in 1995.
Pelfrey said in terms of violent crimes, VCU was the fourth-safest in the state. He said the inaccurate headline resulted from a misunderstanding of the study.
His survey also did not include nonviolent property crimes, such as larcenies and car thefts. According to the state police data, VCU led the state in larcenies last year, with 743. In terms of total crimes, VCU has the third-highest per-capita rate among the 20 colleges in the state police report - not the fourth-lowest. MEMO: Staff writer Vanee Vines contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: REPORTED CRIME ON VIRGINIA CAMPUSES
GRAPHIC
SOURCE: Virginia State Police
The Virginian-Pilot
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
A BREAKDOWN OF REPORTED CRIME ON STAE CAMPUSES
GRAPHIC
The Virginian-Pilot
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
KEYWORDS: SECURITY STUDY STATISTICS HIGHER EDUCATION
CAMPUS CRIME COLLEGE CAMPUS by CNB