When high school seniors choose which university to attend, the safety of the campus is an important factor to consider. Thanks to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, more commonly called the Clery Act, most American universities are required to report any violent crime that occurs each year on campus. The data, which includes the number of rapes, incidents of stalking, and assaults and other violent crimes that occur on campus, is accessible to students and parents to review when selecting a college to attend. As a recent report shows, however, six Chicago area universities, and potentially many more across the country, may be more dangerous than their reported numbers portray.
Location Matters
The Clery Act, named in honor of a student who was murdered on a Pennsylvania campus in 1986, mandates that any college in America that receives any type of federal aid must provide a yearly report of crime on campus, campus being the key word. In December 2014, a 23-year-old student of Loyola University was fatally shot one block off of the university’s main campus. When Loyola released their 2014 crime report, the number of homicides was listed as zero. This is, as a university spokesperson reported, due to the fact that the Clery Act only requires that schools report on crimes that happen within a certain geographic location. “The crime occurred near Albion and Lakewood, which per the Clery Act, is not within the university’s reportable geographical boundaries.”
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