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Campus Crime Files Tell Partial Story
by Elizabeth Head
Searching through the campus security files is an extensive and lengthy process. The Campus Security office at Mars Hill College is required to record every call they receive and to describe each complaint or situation reported. There are three pages for each day, resulting in over ninety pages of reported incidents per month.
When searched in early March for instances of sexual assault or rape since September, no entries could be found. Sandra Robertson, director of security, confirmed that at that point, nothing had been officially reported.
Since that time, one rape victim has stepped forward and described for the Hilltop an incident that took place last fall. Other victims of sexual assault have reportedly described incidents to a resident assistant in Stroup.
Because many sexual assault victims do not report, the statistics are obviously inaccurate. Mars Hill has begun an effort to encourage sexual assault victims to report these crimes.
Under the Clery Act, all colleges are required by Federal law to disclose campus crime statistics. This law, effective since 1998, was named in memory of Jeanne Clery, a sexual assault victim at Lehigh University in 1986. During her freshman year, Jeanne was raped and murdered while sleeping in her dorm room.
Under the law, a crime must be disclosed even if it is reported months after it occurred.
According to the Handbook for Campus Crime Reporting put out by the U.S. Department of Education, "All crimes are disclosed by the calendar year (Jan. 1-Dec. 31) in which they were reported, regardless of the year in which they occurred."
Bill Dycus has recently proposed Mars Hill's first sexual assault policy. Because many sexual assault victims are reluctant to speak out about the crimes, the policy outlines three different options for reporting. The options include reporting anonymously (not giving one's name or any information about the people involved), confidentially (giving one's name without it being shared with others), and providing a written statement in which the victim agrees to be identified to the "alleged perpetrator" so that the case can be investigated and a hearing held. The third option is most strongly encouraged by the college. In addition, victims may choose whether or not they wish to report the incident to police.
Although anonymous reporting is better than no reporting at all, this is the least encouraged by the college. Reporting anonymously greatly increases the chances for an overlap of information. If, for example, a student who wishes to remain anonymous reports the sexual assault to more than one person, it becomes easy to mistake the same case for two separate cases. This obviously increases the difficulty of maintaining accurate crime statistics.
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