Colleges Differ Widely on How They Tally Incidents Under Crime-Reporting Law By JULIE L. NICKLIN Ohio University's annual crime report lists 17 major categories of crimes, including "sexual battery" and "gross sexual imposition." ALSO SEE: Related stories and the statistics from 483 institutions organized by state The University of Kentucky's document lists 35 crimes, ranging from "ticket scalping" and "theft of bicycle" to "sodomy" and "sexual abuse." The differences are typical. The Chronicle's analysis of crime reports from 483 colleges and universities reveals that institutions use vastly different classifications in reporting the crimes that occur on their campuses or in affiliated buildings -- even though they are publishing the reports under the same federal law. The Chronicle called about 160, or one-third, of the institutions surveyed to clarify their statistics. Many institutions had failed to include required categories, added extra ones, used state crime-classification categories, or arranged the information in a confusing way. Experts on campus safety point out that the inconsistencies make it difficult for current or prospective students and their parents to effectively compare the safety records of campuses. Some experts also wonder whether some institutions are trying to obscure their crime statistics. S. Daniel Carter, vice-president of Security on Campus, a campus-watchdog organization in King of Prussia, Pa., says he has no proof that any institution is "intentionally trying to disguise" its statistics, but "that doesn't mean I don't think that has happened." Campus police officers say that the law only outlines broad guidelines for reporting crimes, and that they have never received any direction from government agencies on how to best present the data. Under the federal campus-crime law, institutions are required to annually report crimes that have occurred on their campuses, classified among 10 categories as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Officials must disclose the number of incidents of murder, forcible and non-forcible sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor-vehicle theft, and the number of arrests for alcohol-, drug-, and weapons-law violations. Neither the F.B.I. , to which institutions submit their reports, nor the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees compliance, has ever indicated how the information should be presented. "The F.B.I. has a role, but it's up to the campuses to contact us and ask for assistance," says James J. Nolan, an F.B.I. official. A 1997 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office noted that colleges were having difficulties complying with the law, and criticized the Education Department for being slow to monitor compliance. Department officials responded to the report by saying they wanted to give institutions time to get used to the regulations. Campus-safety experts, however, maintain that the "spirit of the law" calls for reports to be prepared in a clear, informative, and concise manner. "If you're trying to meet the intent of the law, then you try to create a report that is as easy to understand as possible to the lay reader," says Doug Tuttle, a policy scientist with the Institute for Public Administration at the University of Delaware, and a former director of public safety there. Mr. Tuttle says the University of Kentucky's report, which discloses some crimes under variations on the F.B.I. groupings, and others under state categories, is not clear. The report, he points out, lists five categories of sex crimes -- indecent exposure, forcible rape, statutory rape, sexual abuse, and sodomy -- rather than the two required by federal law. "I don't know what 'sexual abuse' is in Kentucky, so I don't know what this means," says Mr. Tuttle. He also says it is unclear whether Kentucky's categories for alcohol-, drug-, and weapons-related infractions indicate incidents or arrests. Federal law requires universities to disclose the number of arrests. Mr. Tuttle applauds the detail in Kentucky's report. "But the required elements need to be there," he says. Stephanie Bastin, the university's police-operations specialist, says that she doesn't consider the statistics confusing. "These are second nature to me, and I know what they all mean. But it might be different for someone coming to this from the outside." She says that "sexual abuse," under state law, is "unwanted touching." The alcohol and weapons numbers represent arrests, she says, while the drug figures include both arrests and citations. There were 18, not 48, people taken into custody for narcotics violations in 1996, and 22, not 50, in 1997. She acknowledges that Kentucky's report does not make those distinctions clear, and that it does stray from the F.B.I. groupings. "Maybe I should put those broad categories in bold," she says. That's the method that Tulane University uses. Its report lists 17 major crime classifications, including the 10 required under federal law, in italics. Several are then further broken down. "Theft," for example, is subdivided into eight types, ranging from shoplifting to book-bag thefts. "That detail sends a message to students," alerting them to specific threats on the campus, Mr. Tuttle says. Beside the statistics table, Tulane's report defines each of the broad crime categories. "We felt that to have a community that could help prevent crime, as well as react to it, it was important to explain what these different offenses are," says Carole B. Dahlem, Tulane's chief of support services for crime prevention and victim resources. In 1997, Ohio University revised its crime report to respond to students' calls for more openness about sex crimes. The university does not list the two major F.B.I. classifications, but lists seven other categories, five of which it breaks down into offenses committed by victims' acquaintances, and those committed by strangers. Campus-safety experts say that such terms as "felonious sexual penetration," would only be understood by people familiar with Ohio's sex-crime laws. Definitions of the crimes are provided below the table, but experts say even those are confusing. "Ohio U. has taken the lead in reporting these additional categories," says Mr. Carter, of Security on Campus. "But this information is incomparable to that of other institutions." Ted Jones, director of campus safety, acknowledges that the Ohio report may not meet the "technical" requirements of the law, but he defends its quality. "The report does not violate the tenets of the law," he says, "but goes beyond them." Pennsylvania State University doesn't list all of the F.B.I. classifications, either. It provides 26 categories, from which the comparable crimes can be gleaned. Penn State's report seeks to comply with state as well as federal laws. Pennsylvania is one of a dozen states that require their institutions to disclose crime statistics each year. In Penn State's case, for each broad crime category, the university's report lists the number of offenses and arrests, and the crime rate (the frequency of an offense measured against the university's student population). Mr. Carter calls the document "reasonably comparable" to others, but he says it should more clearly report sex offenses. He also says that the small type used to print the report might discourage some students and parents from reading it. Clifford Lutz, a police supervisor at Penn State, says officials decided to pack statistics required by both the state and the federal governments into one chart because both sets of data must be distributed to the same people. Officials also wanted to keep the cost of producing and distributing the reports to a minimum. "We're trying to satisfy a whole lot of bosses -- each with their own agendas," Mr. Lutz says. Campus-safety experts say that the crime report of the University of California at Berkeley is informative, and arranged in a manner that is easy to understand. The report lists the 10 crime categories required by the F.B.I., with incidents and arrests for each. It also provides information on crimes at off-campus locations, such as sorority or fraternity houses, that are affiliated with the university, as well as reports made to campus officials. Mr. Carter describes it as "one of the best charts I've seen in terms of clarity and being able to pull out useful information." By looking at the chart, he notes, a student can see that a total of 36 forcible sex offenses were reported as occurring at off-campus locations in 1995, 1996, and 1997. Tiye Candace Scott, Berkeley's manager of campus-safety programs, says that police officials have worked hard to make the report concise but useful. "I don't think a lot of places are non-compliant purposely," she says. "People are just using their own judgment, and a lot of it has to do with not knowing," she says. Jeanne Van Vlandren, director of the Education Department's institutional participation and oversight service, says that the department plans to work more closely with colleges and universities on their reporting practices, as they begin to comply with campus-crime-law changes that were approved by Congress in October. The changes call on institutions to broaden their reporting in some ways, and to be more specific in others. "Everybody's goal is to get much clearer on what the standards and requirements are," Ms. Van Vlandren says. "And then we can look at the format for reporting." http://chronicle.com Section: Students Page: A41