With two assaults reported in the last three weeks, should students feel safe at HSU?
According to Stateuniversity.com’s “Safest Schools List,” HSU is ranked 384 out of 450 in the nation and 38 out of 47 in California. Does that mean HSU is less safe than 383 other campuses nationwide?
StateUniversity.com released the the list in December of 2009.
Stateuniversity.com assigned safety ratings to 450 different schools based on the number of occurrences of aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, theft/larceny, motor vehicle theft, forcible rape, and murder on campus. According to a StateUniversity.com press release, the ranking system gives more weight to violent crimes.
The list contains crime statistics that creators of the list obtained from the FBI, which gathered Annual Safety (Clery) Reports from campus safety officials.
Associated Students President Brandon Chapin says that while students are “warranted to not feel as safe,” he believes University Police are working hard. “There is always room for improvement,” said Chapin, “But UPD is always patrolling.”
HSU Police Chief Tom Dewey has “deep reservations” that Stateuniversity.com’s ranking is not an accurate assessment of campus safety.
In addition to the website not being recognized by any university authority, Dewey says the rating system has not been validated as a reliable measure of safety because it does not address all aspects of campus safety.
The report does not reflect common ways in which students are injured and hospitalized, such as instances of being drunk in public, assault and battery, drunk driving, fighting and traffic accidents.
Furthermore, neither of the recent physical assaults against HSU students would be included in the Stateuniversity.com list because they would not be classified as aggravated assault, said Dewey. From 2003 to 2008, UPD reported four aggravated assaults, two of which occurred in 2005.
“Instances like the recent assaults could be happening at other campuses,” said Dewey. “But you wouldn’t know it looking at [Stateuniversity.com’s] list.”
The U.S. Department of Education publishes the same campus crime statistics on its website but does not rank the schools or assign them a safety rating number like Stateuniversity.com does.
The main contention UPD has with Stateuniversity.com’s list is that the ranking is not objective and does not consider enough factors. For example, the ranking does not differentiate between residential and non-residential campuses or between community colleges and traditional universities. Of the top 10 campuses, five are community colleges. Seven University of California campuses, including Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis and Santa Barbara, rank lower than HSU.
“Does this mean that UCs are more dangerous than HSU or the community colleges for that matter?” asked Dewey. “I would submit that UCs do a better job of encouraging students to report crimes and creating more comprehensive Clery reports.” Dewey said that in the case of most UC’s and CSU’s, crime rates are high because more students report crimes, not because of increased criminal activity.
Two weeks ago, The Lumberjack reported that students underreport sexual assaults on campuses nationwide. In that article, HSU professor and women studies Program Leader Kim Berry said there is a lack of training for HSU faculty and staff on how they should support students who are are sexually assaulted.
UPD checks records of crimes reported each month, said Dewey. They crosscheck their records with the Arcata Police Department, other local law enforcement, and Housing and Student Affairs to ensure that nothing has been overlooked for the Clery report.
If colleges underreport crimes in the Clery report, the Department of Education can fine them $27,500 for each violation.
“The students here have a closer relationship with UPD than most urban campuses do,” said Dewey. “We try to cultivate a culture here that favors reporting. That makes us accessible and approachable, and encourages students to report crimes, even anonymously.”
Bill Richards is vice president of business development for Net Industries, a limited liability company that publishes Stateuniversity.com. In its capacity as an “independent monitor” of public institutions, Net Industries funded the safest schools study.
Richards said that the while the report is generally useful to prospective students, it should not be interpreted so strictly. The study should be seen more as a collection of statistics, rather than a strict ranking.
“Folks shouldn’t make a broad judgment based on the ranking,” said Richards. “The real context comes from what other journalists do, comparing the statistics found in the report to more current trends.”
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