KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tuition may not be the most troubling
concern for parents sending sons and daughters off to college.
A disturbing pattern of violent crime has erupted across the
nation’s campuses — from Yale University, where a female graduate student was strangled,
to the University of California at Los Angeles, where a chemistry student was
stabbed repeatedly in a lab.
While saying that campuses almost always are safer than
their surrounding communities, Jonathan Kassa of Security On Campus Inc.
acknowledged that the headlines can create the opposite impression.
“This has been a very uniquely deadly and brutal first
semester, so there is concern,” said Kassa, the executive director of the
nonprofit organization, which seeks to reduce campus crime.
This month at Sacramento State University in California, a
student was beaten to death in his dormitory by a bat-wielding roommate. A
football player was fatally knifed at the University of Connecticut.
In September, a Kansas City woman was killed by a stray
bullet on a campus in Atlanta. In May, a student was shot down while working in
the bookstore cafe at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
“Those big incidents do worry me, but I worry more
about the more regular types of crimes,” said Elise Higgins, a senior at the
University of Kansas whose friend was mugged on campus a year ago. “That
made me really aware that I can be vulnerable even when I’m on campus around
buildings I’m familiar with.”
Kassa said that sensational tragedies not only distort the
college picture, but can distract students from the bigger problems of theft,
assault, stalking, sex offenses and alcohol abuse.
Parents and students should be aware of four important
points about crimes at colleges: Four of five cases are student on student.
Most victims are men. More offenses occur off campus. Alcohol is involved 90
percent of the time.
Kansas universities are dealing with a series of rapes, and
athletic teams in Kansas and Missouri have caused coaches nightmares in recent
years with fights that have led to stabbings and gunshot wounds.
“Students should feel safe at KU,” said Jim
Marchiony, an associate athletic director, “but like everyone, anywhere,
they need to always be cautious, use some common sense and not be lulled into a
false sense of security.”
Deadly crime is rare on campuses, Kassa said, and statistics
give no indication it is increasing.
Crime reports from area campuses reviewed by The Kansas City
Star support that. The number of reported violent crimes — assaults, robberies
and rapes — is small. In 2008, the reports showed:
—Forty-eight violent crimes were committed on Missouri’s 12
four-year public campuses — an increase of six from the previous year. Ten of
those were rapes.
—Four cases — one sex offense and three robberies — occurred
at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ten violent crimes — six aggravated
assaults, a sex offense and three robberies — were reported at the University
of Missouri in Columbia.
—Twenty-six such crimes occurred at the eight public
colleges in Kansas, a decrease of three from 2007. They included nine sex
offenses.
—Five of the sex offenses were committed on or near KU’s
campus. Two were at the medical school in Kansas City, Kan., where there also
were three aggravated assaults. Both campuses had just one robbery each, but
university police in Lawrence reported two aggravated assaults.
—At Kansas State University, three violent crimes — a
robbery and two aggravated assaults — were reported on campus in 2008. In 2007,
13 violent crimes were reported, including eight sex offenses.
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In Lawrence and Manhattan, police are hunting a serial
rapist who they think has attacked 13 women off campus in the last decade. In
August, KU police reported an unrelated attempted rape in a campus dormitory.
To put those crime rates in perspective, they occurred in
student populations of 136,811 and 67,488, respectively.
There have been no murders, on or off campus, at area
universities since 2005, when three KU students in an off-campus apartment died
at the hands of an arsonist, and an elderly MU professor was found slain in a
campus garage.
Since 1990, all colleges and universities in federal
financial aid programs annually report crimes on and near their campuses to the
U.S. Department of Education. The data are passed to the Justice Department.
In 2007, the latest year for which national numbers are
available, 48 killings occurred on the nation’s four-year campuses. That year,
however, a mentally ill student gunned down 32 people at Virginia Tech.
The year before, eight people died violently on the nation’s
more than 4,000 campuses, down from 11 in 2005.
Since the Virginia Tech rampage, all universities have tried
to prepare for the rare incident of a person on campus with a gun.
Robbery is a far more common campus crime. Hundreds occur
each year.
According to Security On Campus Inc., sexual assault is
increasing. The numbers don’t show it, but officials think it often goes
unreported.
Thieves commit most of the crimes at area schools. Crimes of
opportunity are most prevalent, campus police said, because students walk away
from a laptop or iPod or leave their cars or dorm rooms unlocked.
Whether a school is nestled among cornfields or next to
inner-city neighborhoods can affect the amount of crime.
The Web site The Daily Beast recently analyzed 4,000 reports
from public and private four-year schools and said the New York Institute of
Technology in Old Westbury, Long Island, with 11,831 students, was the safest
in the country.
The least safe campus on the list was Emerson College, an
arts-focused school in Boston. In The Daily Beast’s survey, many urban campuses
fared poorly, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the University of Maryland at Baltimore and Tufts University in
Medford, Mass., outside Boston.
A few weeks ago, a UMKC student was mugged walking home from
the business school. Kipp Cozad, a UMKC graduate student from Liberty, Mo.,
heard about it, “but I have never felt uncomfortable here.”
Cozad said she takes many night classes, but “I park
fairly close and I never find myself drifting off where there aren’t people
around.”
Surprisingly, experts say crime can occur less often on
urban campuses because students there expect it and act accordingly. At more
rural schools, students might feel more secure and take fewer precautions.
April Beffer, who is majoring in social work, goes
everywhere on the UMKC campus with a group, but she still feels more secure on
campus than at home, especially after recent rapes — against women who were not
students — in and near the Waldo area. “I’m getting a dog,” Beffer
said.
Essence Smith, an 18-year-old UMKC freshman from
Independence, Mo., said she keeps her belongings close, locks her doors and
stays aware of her surroundings. “I usually feel so safe at UMKC because
there are emergency buttons everywhere you go.”
In the last two years, campuses nationwide have installed
electronic alert systems, key card systems for dorms and more lighting; created
student security escorts; and re-evaluated emergency response plans.
This year Higgins, the community affairs director for the KU
Student Senate, is pushing for improved off-campus lighting. Recently, 300 KU
students attended a self-defense class.
Mary Todd, the director of the K-State Women’s Center, said
the center was partnering with student government, the city of Manhattan, the
Aggieville Business Association and Fort Riley to improve lighting on streets
and get high-resolution video cameras. The campus ROTC and the Ali Kemp
Foundation offer self-defense training.
Crime comes in spurts and cycles, but for the most part is
fairly steady, said Don Stubbings, a crime prevention officer for the K-State
Police Department.
“Let’s say burglars move on or near campus one year;
the next year they are gone. That crime tapers off, and then a different crime
is up,” Stubbings said.
“Campus crime is not new,” said Kassa of Security
On Campus Inc. “You can’t stop it all. You can’t control everything,
search everyone, but you can reduce the risks and strengthen the response. Be
prepared.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
