It’s something I know we all think about: crime and safety.
In the Clifton area, it’s no question that student safety is a huge concern. The “Greg Hand” emails (now sent as “Public Safety” emails since Mr. Hand’s retirement) are a constant reminder of the importance to be smart & be safe.
Unfortunately, as official university surveys have shown, students by and large do not think that “being smart” will keep them safe. There are high levels of fear in our students that often don’t match up with reality; while crime is going down at an unprecedented rate, fear levels aren’t.
What we have is at least partly a perception issue, years in the making.
Because even if you never personally experience a crime, believing that you are likely to be a victim sometime in the next 4 years is detrimental to your college experience. When you have fear, your negative experience is real to you – regardless of whether or not that fear is justified.
Part of that fear is the university’s own doing. It has to do with which crimes a university chooses to report (both real-time and in year-end summaries) based on its interpretation of the Clery Act, a federal law requiring schools to report crime where their students live. Some schools take this to mean only on-campus. Some schools include areas off-campus as well.
UC, comparatively, has a fairly wide interpretation which includes a huge off-campus area – which I for one definitely appreciate. Because even though the public safety emails can be frightening, it’s information that we all deserve to have. And it’s information that the university is not technically required to give out – and unfortunately, our peer institutions often don’t.
What’s the result? Comparing college crime rates is nearly impossible.
For example: UC and Ohio State students alike probably believe that UC is the more dangerous campus of the two. But what do the facts say? On-campus crime at UC is significantly lower than at OSU.
How about off-campus? Clery statistic comparators such as the links above define “noncampus” as “buildings or property the university owns or controls” – which obviously excludes most off-campus housing and makes the stats pretty much useless. But if you take a look at some specific recent examples, you’d be hard-pressed to say Columbus is much safer than Clifton.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible right now to get the numbers and make a case either way. So perception of crime – which lags far behind reality – reigns supreme.
So what’s the moral of the story?
First, that although crime does exist at UC, and we can always do better to prevent it, by and large our students believe crime is worse than it actually is.
Second, that prospective students deserve a better way to compare colleges’ crime rates.
Current Clery statistics are a far cry from allowing students and parents to make informed judgments about safety on and off-campus. In fact, the lack of consistency ends up damaging the reputation of universities who make the right choice to be more transparent.
In the meantime, we can all make an effort to spread the truth – that safety at UC is much better than it was just 5 years ago, and that if any Ohio State student tells you that their campus is much safer than yours, the only comparable proof that we do have seems to say otherwise.
Read UC's full Campus Safety Report here and OSU's here. And here is a Columbus Dispatch story on the college crime reporting debacle.
In the Clifton area, it’s no question that student safety is a huge concern. The “Greg Hand” emails (now sent as “Public Safety” emails since Mr. Hand’s retirement) are a constant reminder of the importance to be smart & be safe.
Unfortunately, as official university surveys have shown, students by and large do not think that “being smart” will keep them safe. There are high levels of fear in our students that often don’t match up with reality; while crime is going down at an unprecedented rate, fear levels aren’t.
What we have is at least partly a perception issue, years in the making.
Because even if you never personally experience a crime, believing that you are likely to be a victim sometime in the next 4 years is detrimental to your college experience. When you have fear, your negative experience is real to you – regardless of whether or not that fear is justified.
Part of that fear is the university’s own doing. It has to do with which crimes a university chooses to report (both real-time and in year-end summaries) based on its interpretation of the Clery Act, a federal law requiring schools to report crime where their students live. Some schools take this to mean only on-campus. Some schools include areas off-campus as well.
UC, comparatively, has a fairly wide interpretation which includes a huge off-campus area – which I for one definitely appreciate. Because even though the public safety emails can be frightening, it’s information that we all deserve to have. And it’s information that the university is not technically required to give out – and unfortunately, our peer institutions often don’t.
What’s the result? Comparing college crime rates is nearly impossible.
For example: UC and Ohio State students alike probably believe that UC is the more dangerous campus of the two. But what do the facts say? On-campus crime at UC is significantly lower than at OSU.
How about off-campus? Clery statistic comparators such as the links above define “noncampus” as “buildings or property the university owns or controls” – which obviously excludes most off-campus housing and makes the stats pretty much useless. But if you take a look at some specific recent examples, you’d be hard-pressed to say Columbus is much safer than Clifton.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible right now to get the numbers and make a case either way. So perception of crime – which lags far behind reality – reigns supreme.
So what’s the moral of the story?
First, that although crime does exist at UC, and we can always do better to prevent it, by and large our students believe crime is worse than it actually is.
Second, that prospective students deserve a better way to compare colleges’ crime rates.
Current Clery statistics are a far cry from allowing students and parents to make informed judgments about safety on and off-campus. In fact, the lack of consistency ends up damaging the reputation of universities who make the right choice to be more transparent.
In the meantime, we can all make an effort to spread the truth – that safety at UC is much better than it was just 5 years ago, and that if any Ohio State student tells you that their campus is much safer than yours, the only comparable proof that we do have seems to say otherwise.
Read UC's full Campus Safety Report here and OSU's here. And here is a Columbus Dispatch story on the college crime reporting debacle.