Threats Facing College Students
In the not-so-distant past, the ivy-covered buildings on academic quadrangles were pictured as sanctuaries that were shielded from the problems of the “real world.” But a growing stream of stories about col- lege students killed, raped, and robbed on campus has shattered that myth. Undergraduates and gradu- ate students can be hurt by other students, or by outsiders who enter their buildings and grounds, or by local residents when students venture outside their gated communities. An abundance of bicycles, electronic devices, and computers in an open, unguarded environment attracts burglars and thieves to dormitories and cafeterias. Special types of inter- personal violence can break out too, taking the form of assaults (including brutality against fraternity pledges during hazing), drunken brawls after sports events, hate crimes (gay bashings and racial attacks), gang rapes (at parties), and date rapes, especially after heavy drinking.
The Extent of Crime on Campus America’s nearly 8 million part-time and full-time college stu- dents face a special problem. Most undergraduates are between the ages of 18 and 24—precisely at the stage of life when the dangers of engaging in violence and theft reach their peak. Simultaneously, people in that same age range face the gravest risks of
being harmed by physical attacks and stealing. Demographically speaking, college campuses contain a volatile mix of potential offenders and victims. Drug taking and drinking raise the odds of trouble breaking out. But what is the reality?
It should come as no surprise that college students turn out to be less likely to experience violence than their nonstudent counterparts. For example, a large proportion of killings that take place on the meanest streets of the nation’s toughest neighborhoods involve young men between the ages of 18 and 24 as a perpetrator, a victim, or both. But rarely is either party enrolled at an insti- tution of higher learning. Similarly, young men who were not students were robbed much more often (about 12 per 1,000 per year) than undergrads (just 7 per 1,000). Nonstudents 18–24 years old also were subjected to aggravated assaults and simple assaults more often than their college counterparts. Most of the assailants of college students were stran- gers (58 percent) rather than acquaintances. Most of these attackers (66 percent) did not use a weapon, and only a small proportion (9 percent) pulled out a gun. College students were less inclined to report these incidents to the police than nonstudents (35 percent filed complaints compared to 47 percent). Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of attacks were carried out off-campus (93 percent), and after dark (72 percent), according to an analysis of NCVS findings from 1995 to 2002 (Baum and Klaus, 2005).
A more recent study that focused only on women between the ages of 18 and 24 found that nonstudents were robbed at a much higher rate than students (6 compared to 3 per 1,000 per year). Nonstudents also suffered from aggravated assaults more frequently than college women (13 compared to 8) as well as from simple assaults (47 compared to 29). Female nonstudents were sexually assaulted a little more often (8 compared to 6), suf- fered completed rapes more often, and were more inclined to report what happened to them to the police than college women (32 percent in contrast to 20 percent), according to an analysis of a massive NCVS database covering the period 1995 to 2013 (Sinozich and Langton, 2014).
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Despite the relative safety of college campuses, serious crimes, even murders, can and do take place on the grounds of institutions of higher learning on occasion. This case led to federal leg- islation that imposed reporting requirements on college administrations:
Early one morning, a student with a history of drug and alcohol abuse wanders through a campus dor- mitory, passing through a series of three propped- open doors that should have been locked. He invades the room of a young woman and proceeds to torture, sodomize, rape, and ultimately kill her. He is caught, convicted, and sentenced to die. But her parents discover that crime on campus is “one of the best-kept secrets in the country.” The callousness, stonewalling, and cover-up by the college’s admin- istration intent on protecting the institution’s public image causes the grieving parents to launch a lawsuit charging negligence and failure to warn of foreseeable dangers. The college offers a settlement, and the parents use the money to set up the first national not-for-profit organization dedicated to preventing campus violence and assisting victims. The parents also lead a movement to force colleges to reveal to current and prospective students information about incidents taking place on campus. After nine states pass laws requiring disclosure of crime data within just a few years, Congress passes the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990. (Clery and Clery, 2001)
A handful of highly publicized shootings and rapes, as well as a spate of negligence lawsuits filed by distraught parents, have compelled administra- tors, faculties, and student governments to address threats to personal safety on college and university campuses. Image-conscious administrators initially devised ways to downplay the risks that their stu- dents actually faced for fear that such revelations would damage their schools’ reputations, scare away potential candidates from applying for admis- sion, and hurt fundraising campaigns seeking dona- tions from alumni. Despite continued opposition by administrators, Congress extended the themes of its 1990 student right-to-know legislation by passing the Higher Education Act in 1992. It mandated
that colleges establish sexual assault prevention pro- grams and grant procedural rights to rape victims.
Congress imposed even tougher right- to-know regulations in 1998 with the enactment of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (named after the young woman murdered in her dorm in the incident cited above). It required institutions receiving federal aid to maintain detailed crime logs and issue comprehensive annual crime reports. All institutions of higher learning must compile and disclose the nature, date, time, and location of incidents brought to the attention of campus security officers as well as the local police. Crimes committed in residential housing, off-campus buildings, parking areas, and adjacent streets must be included. The log must be made available to the public—especially students, parents, employ- ees, and journalists—during normal business hours. These statistics can be posted online as well. Timely warnings must be issued to alert the campus community about ongoing threats to per- sonal safety. Administrations face a fine of $25,000 for each willful violation of the reporting require- ments (Carter, 2000; and Sampson, 2004). In 2014, amendments to the Clery Act went in to effect that were monitored by the U.S. Depart- ment of Education. College administrations were required to start collecting and disclosing data about incidents of domestic violence, dating vio- lence, sexual assault, and stalking on campus; to offer programs to incoming students and employ- ees designed to prevent these four kinds of crimi- nal activity; and to improve their responses to these offenses by offering assistance to victims to change their academic, living, working, and trans- portation arrangements, and by notifying them about their rights (Clery Center, 2014).
Each year, reports of property crimes on college campuses are much more numerous than violent crimes, according to the extensive database main- tained by the U.S. Department of Education (see Table 11.2). Larcenies top the list, but some of these thefts are of school property from offices or labs or items from the bookstore rather than students’ posses- sions (and therefore do not appear in Table 11.2).
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Burglaries (again, not solely of student lockers or dorm rooms) take place more frequently than vehicle thefts from nearby lots and streets. As for violent offenses, aggravated assaults outnumber robberies and rapes. In terms of trends from 2001 to 2013, the numbers of reported aggravated assaults, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts have declined. Reports of robberies have not improved much and complaints to the police or to campus security departments of forcible rapes and other sexual assaults have risen over the years.
Murders on college grounds are relatively rare, unlike on the contested turf of poor neighbor- hoods, where thousands of 18- to 24-year-olds lose their lives every year. Killings on campus, pre- sented in the first row of Table 11.2, do not show a consistent trend. In 2007, a deranged undergraduate slaughtered 33 people, and another shooting ram- page by a graduate student took place in 2008, snuffing out five lives, reversing any short-lived improvements in campus security (see Hauser and O’Connor, 2007; and Nizza, 2008). During 2013, over 25 shootings took place on or near college campuses, claiming the lives of 18 people and wounding many others (Kingkade, 2014). The total loss of life in 2013 stood at 24.
Most campus slayings involved firearms and could be characterized as student-on-student, but some casualties included administrators, staff, and professors. (However, college teaching remains one of the safest occupations.) Box 11.1 lists some of the bloodiest high-profile shootings, mostly by undergraduates and graduate students, that broke
out over the decades on campuses both large and small, in urban and rural settings claiming many innocent lives.
In the aftermath of bloody rampages, classes are cancelled, students build shrines and post messages of consolation online and organize memorials. Administrators set up scholarship funds in the names of the victims and offer crisis and grief counseling to distraught members of campus com- munities. But the reactions go far beyond those immediate responses. Campus police forces and local law enforcement agencies engage in “threat assessment” when necessary: a process that involves identification of troubled students and evaluation of verified facts about them, determining their threat level and devising an effective response (Booth et al., 2011). The FBI has encouraged administra- tors to involve the campus community in “active shooter” drills. These exercises are intended to limit the bloodshed when a mentally unbalanced person opens fire on unsuspecting targets. Many adminis- trations are enhancing the mental health services offered at counseling centers especially to recognize red flags and identify potentially explosive members of the campus community. Simultaneously, they are arming their security forces and devising lock- down procedures to seal off buildings. In accor- dance with a 2008 federal law, campuses are signing up students and faculty to receive immedi- ate emergency notification alerts via e-mail and text messages about incidents as soon as possible after they take place (Sander, 2011).
T A B L E 11.2 Crimes Committed on College Campuses, United States, 2001–2011
Number of Incidents per Year
Type of Crime 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
Murders 17 9 11 44 16 17 24 Forcible sex offenses 2,200 2,600 2,670 2,700 2,540 3,440 5,050 Robberies 1,660 1,630 1,550 1,560 1,410 1,650 1,570 Aggravated assaults 2,950 2,830 2,660 2,600 2,330 2,500 2,300 Burglaries 26,900 28,640 29,260 29,490 23,080 20,230 16,000 Motor vehicle thefts 6,220 6,290 5,530 4,620 3,980 3,620 3,260
NOTE: Numbers of reported incidents, except for murders, are rounded to the nearest 10. Figures for 2001–2009 are from a slightly different DOE database.
SOURCES: U.S. Department of Education, Indicators of School Safety, 2013, On-Campus Crimes, Table 22.1; and U.S. Department of Education Cam- pus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool (2014).
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In the wake of the mass shootings listed in Box 11.1 above, some parents and students called for stricter gun control legislation and lobbied to designate campuses as gun-free zones (Mash, 2013). However, others took an opposite stance and argued that the problem was not too many guns on campus, but too few. Guns enthusiasts convinced legislatures in eight states to pass “licensed campus carry” laws (Burnett, 2011; and keepgunsoffcampus, 2014) (for a discussion of arming for self-defense, see Chapter 13). Meanwhile, hundreds of colleges have paid for a training program that encourages students to dispel feelings that they are defenseless and to take
advantage of their superior numbers and to fight back with improvised weapons, from backpacks to laptops, to subdue a deranged gunman (Zagier, 2008). Even though the streets around urban univer- sities and campus buildings and grounds are much safer than they were at the start of the 1990s, self- defense classes for students are growing in popularity. Some colleges offer credit for these courses; some are coed and others are designed to empower women. The syllabus not only centers on physical skills but also teaches about responsible decision making and the dangers of drinking to excess as well as everyday risk avoidance tactics (Schwab, 2008).