Utah State releases annual security report for 2017
Utah State University Police released crime information and statistics for 2017 in an email to all students Friday. The Annual Campus Security Report, which is mandated to be released before Oct. 1 every year, includes information on crime prevention, services, policies, reporting and statistics on reported crimes on or near campus spanning the last three years.
The report provides important statistics on the occurrence of sexual assault, stalking, dating violence and domestic violence. Reported instance of rape decreased from 2016 from 14 to seven. Other sexual assaults were a strong outlier, increasing from one in 2016 to 11 reported instances in 2017.
Domestic and dating violence, which spiked in 2015 and 2016 respectively, dropped to just four reported incidents total in 2017, while stalkings increased to nine.
The report’s scope is limited to reported incidents, meaning that potential unreported sexual assaults remain unacknowledged in the figures. A campus survey from 2017 found that 1 in 10 women at USU have experienced some level of sexual assault and that most students did not know how to enter a complaint with the university’s Title IX office.
The statistics table collects all crimes reported to USU police or campus authorities, stretching back three years. The crimes are sorted geographically, as “on-campus,” “non-campus,” and “public property,” which is any public area adjacent to the university. As in previous years, the highest number of reported crimes on campus were drug and liquor law violations.
In the report, students also can find in-depth outlines of recommended procedures for various on-campus issues, including multiple responses to emergencies—shelter-in-place, lockdown, evacuation—and reporting sexual assault and harassment.
The security report is made in compliance with the Clery Act, which requires colleges in the United States to disclose information on on-campus crime and policy statements on how crimes are defined, reported, and punished.
The act was named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in her dorm in 1986. Her death led to increased awareness about crime on college campuses, a conversation that has taken on heightened public interest in the midst of a growing national discussion about underreported sexual assault at universities around the country.
The full report can be found on the Clery compliance page.
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