The crime statistics being released by colleges nationwide on Wednesday are so misleading that they give students and parents a false sense of security. Even the U.S. Department of Education official who oversees compliance with a federal law requiring that the statistics be posted on Oct. 1 each year admits that they are inaccurate.

The crime statistics being released by colleges nationwide on Wednesday are so misleading that they give students and parents a false sense of security.

Even the U.S. Department of Education official who oversees compliance with a federal law requiring that the statistics be posted on Oct. 1 each year admits that they are inaccurate. Jim Moore said that a vast majority of schools comply with the law but some purposely underreport crimes to protect their images; others have made honest mistakes in attempting to comply.

In addition, weaknesses in the law allow for thousands of off-campus crimes involving students to go unreported, and the Education Department does little to monitor or enforce compliance with the law � even when colleges report numbers that seem questionable.

The White House and some in Congress have noticed and are pushing for changes, including increased sanctions.

The law, known as the Clery Act, was enacted in 1991 to alert students to dangers on campus, but it often fails at its core mission, a joint investigation by The Dispatch and the Student Press Law Center found.

Crime on campus: Searchable database for all Ohio colleges

Elizabeth City State University is one that seemed like a safe campus on paper.

The North Carolina school�s annual crime reports showed that during an 11-year span, no student ever had been sexually assaulted.

But then in April 2013, a dorm security guard pushed student Katherine Lowe onto her bed and fondled her. It was the fourth time he had done that to her, and she was determined that it would be the last. She went to police, who soon learned the truth: The school�s crime reports were way off.

Police discovered as many as 17 sexual-assault victims whose cases never were reported to federal education officials � a gross violation of a law that requires colleges to count and report such crimes.

What happened at Elizabeth City State is one of many examples of what�s wrong with the Clery Act, a complicated law fraught with loopholes that can allow colleges to make their campuses and neighborhoods look safer than they really are.

Colleges such as Elizabeth City State and Urbana University in Ohio have failed at meeting the most-basic requirements of the law: accurately counting and reporting the number of crimes that happen on or near campus each year.

Other colleges across the U.S. have drawn boundaries around their campuses to exclude off-campus housing where the majority of their students live � as the law allows. And some, including Ohio State University, often choose not to alert students when violent crimes happen in those areas.

Three days after The Dispatch asked about the lack of alerts, Ohio State issued two alerts during the weekend, including the first OSU alert for a possible off-campus sexual assault in more than three years. University officials said yesterday that the timing was a coincidence.

College officials such as those from the University of Toledo said they didn�t do enough for many years to create victim-friendly cultures that encourage students to report crimes to police or campus officials.

Crime statistics are taking on even more importance as U.S. News & World Report and other college-ranking publications use them to measure safety.

�We encourage people to use the Clery Act as a starting point,� Moore said. �We think the data is useful to give a long view.�

But its intent � inspired by the slaying of Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Clery, who was unaware of a rash of crimes on her campus in 1986 prior to her death � was to create a one-stop gauge of campus safety.

�The magnifying glass is now targeted on the schools, so it�s important that they report � and they know it,� said Clery�s mother, Connie Clery, of Bryn Mawr, Pa.

No crimes here

The Dispatch and the Student Press Law Center analyzed 12 years of Clery Act crime statistics involving nearly 1,800 schools with on-campus housing and found that:

Nearly 3 percent have reported that there never has been a crime of violence on their campuses. Not a single homicide, robbery, serious physical assault or sexual assault.

Nearly 16 percent reported that there has never been a physical altercation that could have resulted in serious harm.

Nearly a fifth reported that there has never been a sexual assault, including Urbana University, northwest of Columbus, where a student told police in 2012 that she was gang-raped in a dorm room.

In any year, at least half of the colleges report zero sexual assaults. About two-thirds report zero serious physical assaults.

Bowling Green State University, for example, said that it had no serious physical assaults on campus in 2011 and 2012, even though its student-disciplinary board punished about 60 students for physical assault. Bowling Green leaders said that even a shoving match is considered �physical abuse� by the code of conduct, but that attacks rarely result in serious injury.

Experts on crime, and even the Education Department�s Moore, say those scenarios seem unrealistic. �If you have a housing unit, it would be hard to believe that over any period of time, any number of years, you could actually be so lucky as to not have any sex crimes,� Moore said.

But those in charge of enforcing the law rarely check accuracy of the colleges� numbers.

The lack of oversight for colleges is troubling to Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, who, in response to the Dispatch/SPLC investigation, is considering a program here that models programs in New York, Texas and California, where investigators audit Clery Act compliance among the schools in their states.

Last year�s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act resulted in the first major overhaul of Clery since the law was enacted.The changes require colleges to report statistics on dating and domestic violence and stalking.

Although final regulations are not expected to be released until next month, the federal Education Department told colleges last year that they must make a good-faith effort to comply with the changes, and the annual reports distributed by colleges on Wednesday should reflect this.

These new requirements may prove challenging for administrators.Those drafting the regulations struggled with how to define dating violence, particularly as it applies to college students who may have different standards than administrators as to what counts as a dating relationship.

�The intent behind Clery was good. The execution often stinks,� said Andrea Goldblum of Columbus, a consultant with the the Margolis Healy firm and former Clery coordinator at Ohio State. �It�s actually really hard to comply with Clery.�

The numbers game

At first, Kathryn Lowe was reluctant to report that a dorm security guard had forced his way into her room at Elizabeth City State.

After the fourth time � when he pinned her to the bed last year and tried to spread her legs apart � she went to campus police, who quickly let the matter die, in part because they thought she was lying.

So she went to city police. She had no idea the impact that decision would have. Police found 127 cases of crimes on campus that had not been thoroughly investigated by the college, including eight rapes.

The Dispatch typically does not identify victims of sexual assault, but in this case, Lowe chose to go public.

�I knew the school tried to cover up things,� Lowe said. �I just didn�t know to that degree."

The fallout has been extensive.

Her molester was convicted of sexual battery and breaking and entering, a verdict he is appealing. The campus police chief resigned and this year pleaded no contest to a charge that he failed to adequately investigate crimes. The college�s chancellor also resigned.

The university hired Margolis Healy, based in Vermont, whose consultants specialize in advising colleges about Clery. They found that the school was �substantially out of compliance.�

�There�s no doubt we definitely had work to do,� said Alyn Goodson, a school attorney.

Margolis Healy�s managing partner and co-founder, Steven J. Healy, said, �It would be a stretch to say Elizabeth City is an outlier, because we�ve seen other universities with the same problems."

One is too many

It takes only one unreported incident for a college to violate the law.

At Urbana University, a female student reported that she had been gang-raped by three male students in March 2012. A nine-page report from the Urbana city police department details the sexual assault that happened in a dorm room.

After a three-month investigation, no criminal charges were filed, partly because of a reluctant victim. Still, the school was required to log the incident as a sexual assault.

Urbana University, which was acquired by Franklin University in April, reported zero sexual assaults in 2012 � just as it had done the previous 11 years.

After The Dispatchand SPLC contacted the university about not reporting the case, school officials said it was an oversight and that they will review city police and campus records to ensure that nothing else has been missed.

Once that review is finished, they said they will update their crime statistics for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 to reflect previously unreported crimes.

�Moving forward, every incident will be reviewed and appropriately reported,� said Urbana spokeswoman Cheri Moore.

Officials at other Ohio universities with reports of no violent crimes over a 12-year span stood by their unblemished crime statistics.

Most cited their faith-based culture as the main reason.

�That sort of thing just doesn�t happen here,� said Jim Dentler, a spokesman for Allegheny Wesleyan College in northeastern Ohio.

Campus-crime researcher Matthew Nobles said it�s worth questioning whether colleges that report zeros actually have zero crime.

�It seems unlikely that if you have 10 years of statistics with a university that has on-campus housing and it shows zeros throughout, it�s very, very unlikely that literally nothing ever happens there that could be reportable,� said Nobles, a professor Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

For sex offenses, the numbers reported by colleges are lower than even conservative estimates would predict.

U.S. Justice Department statistics say that over a nine-month school year, about 3 percent of women on any given campus will be a victim of sexual assault, but only 5 percent of that group will report it to police or a campus official.

Between 2001 and 2012, colleges reviewed by The Dispatch/SPLC reported nearly 33,000 sexual assaults. Applying the national average to the number of females living on campuses, those colleges collectively would have been expected to report closer to 124,000 sexual assaults.

The national justice statistics aren�t a perfect predictor of Clery-countable sex offenses. But experts say they give a rough estimate, and the difference between what is reported and what might be expected is large enough to cause concern.

Out of bounds

An Ohio State freshman returned to an off-campus apartment with a group of friends after a late Sunday church service in January and stayed the night to avoid a long, frigid walk back to his dorm.

In the early morning hours, the 18-year-old man was awakened by someone touching his genitals. He remained motionless momentarily, thinking it was a dream, until he made eye contact with his abuser, someone he had considered a friend.

A few months later, on a warm spring night this past May in the same east-campus neighborhood, another OSU student was walking home when a stranger pulled a gun on her and threatened to kill her if she didn�t follow his orders.

He pressed her against a car and sexually assaulted her until a passing car scared him away.

Two weeks later, that same man raped another woman in the same neighborhood.

But those crimes won�t be counted by OSU because, while the law requires colleges to report crimes on or near campus, it gives the colleges latitude in defining what near means. None of those incidents prompted an alert to students from Ohio State, which would have been required by federal law if the crimes had happened on campus property.

�If the same thing had happened in a dorm on campus, there would have been alerts, emails, posters and everyone would know,� said the male victim, who, like the female sexual-assault victim, asked that he not be identified. �If you live across the street, across that campus line, it�s like nothing ever happened.�

The overwhelming majority of colleges across the country count only the crimes that happen on their property or at sites tied to their schools, such as fraternity and sorority houses. That�s the minimum required by the Clery Act.

Colleges routinely exclude crimes committed only blocks from campus, in neighborhoods that often house the majority of the student body.

The Dispatch/SPLC analysis of Clery data found that at 72 percent of schools with on-campus housing, less than half of their students live on campus. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics� National Crime Victimization Survey, about 30 percent of all violent crimes happen in or near a victim�s home.

Ohio State reported two robberies on its campus in 2012, but in the area just east of campus there were 71 robberies in that span, Columbus police data show. In the same year, Ohio State reported four aggravated assaults. East of campus, Columbus police responded to 17.

OSU Police Chief Paul Denton said it�s difficult for his department to track crimes off campus, which is outside his jurisdiction. Even when the OSU police learn of crimes in student neighborhoods, Denton said, it can be risky to broadcast that information. Getting the details wrong could jeopardize a Columbus police investigation, he said, or get the public looking for a false suspect.

But he acknowledged that there might be cases in which the university should tell students about crimes off campus. Such an alert after the May rape might have helped prevent the second, he acknowledged. �I realize that,� he said. �It�s a struggle in all these cases.�

The two OSU sexual-assault victims interviewed by The Dispatch hope that colleges eventually will be required to report all known crimes that could put students at risk, on campus or off. They both credit OSU for being supportive and helpful after their assaults, but they continue to be disappointed that off-campus crimes aren�t counted in Clery numbers and don�t always trigger crime alerts.

�I�m always looking over my shoulder now, and I don�t want anyone else to have to go through this,� the female student said. �Most of us live in these neighborhoods. We should count just as much as the students who live in the dorms.�

Paper tigers

No one is making sure on a wide scale that schools are honestly and correctly reporting statistics.

State auditors in California, New York and Texas who review crime data reported by public colleges in their states have uncovered widespread misreporting, with confusion resulting in both over- and underreporting.

Most states don�t have programs to independently verify the numbers colleges report. In Ohio, the state�s college-crime guru scans school websites to see if they published their crime data online. As long as the numbers are there, he doesn�t question their accuracy.

�We have no authority to investigate,� said Rick Amweg, director of campus safety and security for the Ohio Board of Regents. �Holding their feet to the fire is the federal government�s job."

But the U.S. Department of Education doesn�t regularly audit the accuracy of the statistics that are reported, either. In fact, a warning on its website says it �cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data reported here.�

Even when statistics change dramatically from year to year, they�re not always flagged for review, such as between 2009 and 2010, when Arizona State University reported an apparently dramatic increase in the number of students referred for alcohol-related disciplinary action � from zero to 989 students. After an SPLC reporter questioned it, the university said the earlier number was incorrect and it intended to correct the numbers.

Only during investigations does the department check whether colleges have reported crimes accurately. Frequently, colleges have not. In 50 of the 63 reviews completed since the law was enacted, the Education Department identified problems with the statistics reported.

Among the 13 four-year public universities in Ohio, two � Miami University and Ohio State University � have faced scrutiny, federal records show. A private college, Notre Dame College of Ohio in South Euclid, also came under review.

With more than 11,000 colleges that are required to comply with Clery, most escape scrutiny. Of those that draw attention � less than 0.006 percent of all colleges � few face serious sanctions.

In all, only a third of investigated colleges have been fined, for a total of $2.8 million since the department began auditing in the late 1990s. Schools can be fined $35,000 for each violation and in recent years, Moore said, �the percentage of cases that resulted in fines has been going up substantially.�

Since 2010, the percentage of cases that resulted in a fine has increased 75 percent � from eight to 14 schools. But the average fine decreased from $130,000 prior to 2010 to $128,000 in the most recent years, the Dispatch/SPLC investigation shows.

Difficult conversations

The University of Toledo campus sprawls across 800 acres and has more than 20,000 students. Ohio Wesleyan University is a small private school in Delaware on 200 acres with about 1,850 students.

Yet between 2001 and 2012 Ohio Wesleyan has reported four times as many sexual assaults (72) as Toledo (18).

Ohio Wesleyan�s number are higher because almost all of its students live on campus, and school administrators have placed a priority on encouraging victims to come forward.

As soon as students step on campus, Ohio Wesleyan officials talk with them about sexual assaults. Each student is required to take a two-hour online course on sexual assault, harassment and alcohol abuse. They�ve created policies � such as not punishing a victim who was drunk at the time of an assault as some schools do � that encourage reporting.

�We�ve worked very hard to create a safe environment,� said Kimberlie L. Goldsberry, dean of students.

Toledo, by its own admission, knows the number of sexual assaults reported under the Clery Act is low.

Like at some other schools, Toledo officials blame themselves for previously lacking a culture that educates faculty members and students on the importance of reporting crimes.

�I completely agree that number is low, extremely low,� said Mary Martinez, Toledo�s student-conduct officer. �It�s been a national epidemic, and sexual assaults have been underreported for a long while, and it was hardly talked about. Every school needs to be having these difficult conversations with the students, parents and administrators. We all can do better educating our campuses.�

At least one student filed a federal complaint against Toledo for its handling of her rape case.

The student, who asked not to be identified, said the university belittled her allegations that a male student –– and once a good friend –– had raped her in his apartment near campus.

University officials told her the rape wasn�t �severe enough� to warrant an expulsion, she said. A campus judicial board found the man guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for a year before lowering the punishment after he appealed. In the end, his punishment was one year of probation, 10 hours of sexual-assault counseling and a $25 administrative fee.

The woman said she had no say in the appeal. Officials repeatedly questioned her story, she said, but interviewed the man just once. Soon after, she left the school. �The university is active in victim-blaming and is an active participant in the rape culture,� she said. �They would rather protect the rapist than the victim.�

University of Toledo officials declined to discuss the case, citing student-privacy laws, but said the school �fully investigates all reports of sexual misconduct and offers survivors resources on campus.�

In the past year, Toledo officials say they have attempted to correct the culture by implementing a sexual-assault education and prevention program that includes training staff members to help victims report the crime and guide them through a difficult process.

The university also issues crime alerts in neighborhoods where the majority of its students reside.

Clery confusion

Critics have long said that the complexity of the Clery Act is an obstacle, even for schools that try to comply.

The primary resource to help colleges decipher the law is a handbook that has ballooned to 285 pages after years of revisions and additions.

Gray areas in the rules allow some to interpret the law incorrectly. In some cases, schools just don�t understand the law.

Between 2001 and 2008, a small nursing school in Peoria, Ill., reported campus crime numbers that, on paper, made it look like one of the country�s most-dangerous colleges.

The St. Francis Medical Center College of Nursing, which has 358 students living on campus, reported hundreds of violent crimes during that time, including sexual assaults, aggravated assaults and robberies.

When Harold �Skip� Alwes became the head of security there, he was shocked that a campus with a single building drew that much crime.

Then Alwes found a problem: The school had erroneously reported crimes from a 40-acre area that included a hospital with 6,000 employees and nearby high-crime neighborhoods.

�There was total confusion, and it was unclear what was campus and how much we were supposed to be reporting,� said Alwes, a former Kansas City police officer. �We got it straightened out, but for a while, those numbers were totally misrepresenting what is a very safe environment for our students and faculty.�

For the past five years, there have been no violent crimes reported on the campus.

Fine lines between some crime definitions have tripped up other schools. Whether an attack rises to the level of an aggravated assault, as an example, can be subjective.

Even finding out that a crime happened can be a challenge.

The law requires colleges to publish crimes reported to police, but also to other �campus security authorities� that range from residence-hall workers to assistant coaches to parking-lot attendants.

Often, safety experts say, those people don�t even know that they have a responsibility under the Clery Act to report crimes to the university. Training for these mandatory reporters varies significantly from college to college.

�The knowledge and expertise on Clery varies as much as the institutions themselves,� said the consultant Healy. �One institution might have a sophisticated reporting system and the one right next to it may be dismal, and that�s more due to ignorance. That�s not an excuse; it�s just a reality.�

cbinkley@dispatch.com

jriepenhoff@dispatch.com

mwagner@dispatch.com

sgregory@splc.org