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68 ;01 The. Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Em
Wensdy Spem e 1,207 -Th6 icianDil -
cy of the data reported here," because it
doesn't independently verify the infor-
mation.
There were nine sexual offenses
reported at Ohio State University in
2003 according to numbers reported by
the schoolunder the ClearyAct,but that
number doubled in 2004 and tripled
2005. But OSU spokesman Rick Amwes
said the higher amounts weren't due
to a boost in crime but rather changes
to the school's crime reporting proce-
dures after a Department of Education
workshop instructed OSU security offi-
cials to redefine the geographical areas
included in the report.
Brown said the University also
recently revisited its reporting pro-
cedure and determined that it does
not need to include accounts of crime
reportedto employeesofSexualAssault
Prevention and Awareness and not to
police. The policy change should lower
the incidence of certain crimes in the
University's following reports.
So what does all this statistical par-
rying really mean about how safe we
should feel walking home at night in the
Diag or walking through the campuses
of OSU or even Virginia Tech? Probably
very little.The Clery Act data may ease
or agitate the fears of many parents,
but online statistical comparisons don't
provide much meaningful context.
"It's unfair to conclude that statis-
tics infer that the campus is more dan-
gerous than other campuses," said Jim
Finckenauer, a professor of criminology
at Rutgers University. "There could be
a lot of reasons why those numbers are
different. It's the same problem people
run into when comparing cities."
Taking a reasoned, - educated
approach to the question of whether
it's safe to come to the University is
more complicated than it would seem
if you glace at crime statistics. If you
looked at crime rates at Virginia Tech
before the attacks, you would have no
idea it would become the site of mass
murder.
There are other ways to find out
how secure campus really is. DPS has a
veritable arsenal of security measures
meant to ensure that young scholars
can study soundly, even at night. How-
ever, so did Virginia Tech. The question
is, are they really effective?
One cold and windy night of 2006,
many members of the Michigan Stu-
dent Assembly set out to walk through
all of campus to locate the dark parts
in an effort to increase the number of
street lights and thereby make cam-
pus safer. The quest for better lighting
became an important point in many
MSA candidate's campaigns after that,
though campus hasn'tgotten noticeably
lighter. Luckily, the University has more
substantial safety measures, although
they are not as well publicized.
To eliminate the need for students to
walk home alone in the dark, DPS offers
S.A.F.E. Walk, a service that escorts
students from a campus location to
their homes for free between 10 p.m.
and 3 a.m. Once run by SAPAC volun-
teers who literally walked callers home,
calling'S.A.F.E. Walk now means being
picked up by a Department of Parking
and Transportation minivan and con-.
veniently delivered to your residence
The tragedy at Virginia Tech drew the
country's attention to campus security.
Can the University protect us in a crisis?
hall or off-campus housing site.
Sitting behind the wheel of a Univer-
sity van, LSA senior Mattison Brady, a
University bus driver who sometimes
drives for S.A.F.E. Walk, said a busy
night might consist of 20 pick-ups.
That doesn't mean that S.A.F.E. Walk
transports 140 different students over
the course of a week though. Accord-
ing to Brady, a lot of the students who
use S.A.F.E. Walk are repeat patrons,
meaning the number of students using
the service each week is probably very
small.
For the hundreds of students who
do walk home alone at night, there are
the blue-light emergency phones that
line campus sidewalks. But while they
make for decorative lighting, they prob-
ably offer little else.
When a blue-light phone receiver is
dislodged, a signal is sent into the DPS
calling center. The usage of the phones
is impossible to track. The calls aren't
given any special distinction from the
other calls made to DPS each day and
chances are they're rarely used.
Despite the blue-light phones,
S.A.F.E. Walk, and other security pre-
cautions, the University isn't exactly on
the cutting edge of safety technology.
At Michigan State University, students
hoping to enter the dorms have to sign
in with a guard at a front desk instead
of trailing in after someone with a key,
and though the University has cameras
in residence halls, there could always
be more. It's times like these when per-
ceived deficiencies are highlighted.
After a national tragedy, Brown said
questions become focused on Universi-
ty emergency plans. After the Virginia
Tech massacre, a segment concerning
mass violence was added to the stan-
dard speeches on safety that are given
to parents and students at orientation.
Brown said parents have increas-
ingly asked whether the University is
going to adopt a text message emer-
gency alert system, though there are no
immediate plans to implement one.
"Parents believe that's the end-all
because they've seen their kids texting
so much and they think that's the best
way of reachingthem," she said.
While parents are having their fears
assuaged during a campus safety pre-
sentation, no one can say how many
new students are engulfed in day-
dreams about what their roommate-
will look like and ignoring the lessons
that are meant to protect them. And
that could be a problem. If people on
campus don't know about University
security procedures, Brown said, all -
services and emergency plans, even
texting, are ineffective.
Finckenauer said people in their
early 20s are psychologically more
prone to disregard safety procedures
and put themselves in dangerous situ-
ations.
"It's young people who make up both
the offender population and victim
population," Finckenauer said. "I don't
know how you get students to listen."
Business senior Riaz Tootla said he
knows something about an emergency
transportation service and how blue-
light phones work, but he wasn't aware
See SAFETY, Page 12B
magine these scenes: A drunk stu-
dent stumbles past the darkened
Chem Building with her purse
swinging loose on her arm. A resi-
dent entering South Quadrangle
lets a stranger trail in through
the dormitory's door behind him.
A student walks home from the
library with his new Macbook Pro,
Blackberry phone and iPod after a late study
night.
It seems that given the regularity of these
situations ne'er-do-wells must be lickingtheir
chops, eyeing the University's campus like an
all-you-can-steal buffet. So, with such ripe
conditions, are college campuses festering
with criminal activity?
Everyone knows about Seung-Hui Cho, the
senior at Virginia Tech University who killed
32 people one Monday morning in April, most
of themsitting in class in unsecuredbuildings.
And most of us have heard about the rape and
murder of Eastern Michigan University fresh-
man Laura Dickinson in an EMU residence
hall last December. Resulting evaluations of
campus safety found universities around the
country lacking in advanced security mea-
sures that might have prevented the violence.
What everyone might not know is that
despite not being at the cutting edge of secu-
rity, crime at universities and colleges is
relatively rare, at least according to statistics
compiled by the U.S. Department of Educa-
tion. A few years ago, it reported that crime
rates are consistently lower on campuses than
public areas. Its reportwas compiledbased on
a decade's worth of crime statistics gathered
through the Clery Act of 1990. The legislation,
prompted by the murder of Jeanne Clery at
Lehigh University in Bethlehem, P; requires
all post-secondary schools to release data on
crime on campus and adjoining public prop-
erty.
Statistics from the Clery Actarethe public's
main resourceto gauge the safeness of individ-
ual campuses. The Department of Education's
website contains search tools where those
concerned can compare three years of crime
numbers from one campus or set of campuses
to the average numbers of another grouping,
defined by population-size, region or type of
program.
How does the University of Michigan mea-
sure up?
Between 2003 and 2005, the University
had an average of 23.6 reports of forced sexual
assaults per year, while the national average
for universities like it, four - year institutions
with residence halls and more than 20,000
students - was just seven reports. The Uni-
versity of Michigan also reported higher than
average incidence rates for arson, aggravated
assault and robbery.
Judging from the numbers, the University
deserves a Gotham-campus reputation - as
out of place as Detroit would be if it was locat-
ed in Canada. But statistics alone can't provide
an accurate or complete picture.
Measuring campus safety is more complex.
Department of Public Safety spokeswoman
Diane Brown said there are several factors
that play into why the University has a high-
er incidence of reports. Aside from having ao
large on-campus housing capacity and host-
ing events like football games that draw thou-
sands of people from outside the University,
differences in reporting crimes by victims
and universities could skew relative statistics.
It could be that other university administra-
tions interpret the requirements of the Clery
Act less stringently when they submit their
statistics or that students here are more likely
to report offenses, Brown said.
Discrepancies in how universities
report crime make it difficult to compare safe-
ty on two campuses or to even have an accu-
rate idea of the crime rate of one school. Above
the results for a crime statistics search, the
Department of Educations posts a disclaimer
warning that it "cannot vouch for the accura-