ARRESTS AT COLLEGES SURGE FOR ALCOHOL AND DRUG VIOLATIONS

Experts Cite Tougher Enforcement And A Change In Federal Law

Alcohol arrests at the nation's colleges rose 24.3 percent in 1998,
the largest increase in seven years. Arrests for violations of drug
laws grew at their sharpest rate in three years, increasing 11.1 percent.

This marks the seventh consecutive year that arrests for liquor- and
narcotics-law violations have gone up, according to an annual survey
of campus crime by The Chronicle.

Liquor arrests grew nearly seven times as fast in 1998 as in 1997,
when they edged up just 3.6 percent. And drug arrests experienced a
much bigger jump in 1998 than in 1997, when they rose 7.2 percent.

Some health researchers say that the increases reflect their findings
that alcohol and drug use on college campuses has risen in recent years.

Campus police officials, as they have for years, insist that the
increases result mainly from tougher enforcement of alcohol and liquor
laws.

Many campus police officers and safety experts also attribute the
increase to changes in the reporting guidelines, passed by Congress in
fall 1998, to require colleges to include crimes that take place just
beyond the campus.

The number of murders, forcible and nonforcible sex offenses,
aggravated assaults, and arson and hate crimes also increased,
according to The Chronicle's survey. A smaller rise was seen in
arrests for violations of weapons laws.

At the same time, the number of burglaries, motor-vehicle thefts, and
robberies declined slightly.

On the national level, the number of violent offenses and property
crimes has been declining over the past few years, dropping 5.4
percent in 1998, according to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

The Chronicle's crime survey, which has been conducted for the past
eight years, is based on the most recent statistics that colleges and
universities are required by federal law to disclose annually. The
survey is based on the responses of 481 four-year institutions, each
enrolling at least 5,000 students. (Community colleges are not
included because they are largely commuter campuses, and typically do
not experience as many crimes as do four-year institutions.)

Experts on campus safety caution against making comparisons based on
the raw numbers. They say that low numbers do not mean a campus is
safe, and high numbers do not mean one is unsafe, because so many
factors can make the reporting of statistics inconsistent.

Liquor, drug, and alcohol arrests are among the most-watched crimes,
though campus-crime experts monitor all the categories. In the most
recent survey, four institutions -- Michigan State University, the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of
California at Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison --
were among the campuses with the most arrests or the largest increases
in two or more of those categories.

The total number of liquor arrests on all campuses rose to 23,261, up
from 18,708 in 1997. Wisconsin, Michigan State, the University of
Minnesota's Twin Cities campus, Western Michigan University, and
Berkeley each reported more than 380 liquor arrests.

Wisconsin, with 792 liquor arrests, placed No. 1 by a large margin. In
1997, it had ranked fifth, with 342.

Wisconsin's increase of 450 arrests also put it at the top of the
chart for year-to-year change. The university was followed by
Washington State, Florida State, San Diego State, and Ball State
Universities. Each reported increases of more than 175 liquor arrests
in 1998.

Susan Riseling, the police chief at the Madison campus, attributes her
institution's high liquor-arrest numbers to the university's hiring
more campus police officers.

Over the past few years, she says, the number of officers had been
declining due to retirements, and by 1997, the institution was down to
40 officers. Since then, the campus has hired 12 new officers,
bringing the force to its current level of 52.

New hires participate in what Ms. Riseling calls "how-to" nights and
weekends, in which the newcomers concentrate on making certain types
of arrests, including those for underage drinking. The officers learn
the skills through repetition, she explains.

"When you have a lot of green officers, you have a lot more
enforcement intensity," Ms. Riseling says.

In the narcotics category, five institutions -- Berkeley, Rutgers
University at New Brunswick, U.N.C. at Greensboro, the University of
Arizona, and Virginia Commonwealth University -- made 122 or more
arrests in 1998.

U.N.C. at Greensboro, Berkeley, San Diego State and Clark Atlanta
Universities, and the University of California at Davis experienced
the largest numerical increases in drug arrests from 1997 to 1998,
with each reporting a rise of more than 50.

While U.N.C. at Greensboro tops the list, with drug arrests jumping to
132 from 17, campus officials say the increase is not as serious as it
appears, and shows why statistics can be difficult to compare between
institutions or between years.

Maj. Jamie Herring, the campus's interim chief of police, says the
university began carrying out changes in 1998 that had been passed by
Congress that fall. Among other things, the legislation required
colleges to expand the area in which they track crimes to include
property that is "reasonably contiguous" to campus.

Greensboro took that to mean any public property one block out from
the campus, or "going through, immediately touching, or creating a
border," Major Herring says.

Under the legislative changes, campuses also must report crimes that
occur in university-owned buildings off the campus. Colleges are not
required to widen the reporting areas until they compile their 1999
crime reports, but many, like Greensboro, chose to do so with their
1998 reports.

"Technologically, we were advanced enough that we could comply with
the law, so we went ahead and did it," Major Herring says.

Of the 132 drug arrests in 1998, 88 occurred on public property near
the campus, and 17 occurred in residence halls, an area the college
also had not included in its 1997 report.

If a person were simply comparing the crimes in campus areas reported
in both 1997 and 1998, the number of drug arrests increased by only
10, not 115.

"If you look at just the on-campus stuff, you don't see those large
increases," says Major Herring. "It's an unfair comparison."

The confusion over how to handle off-campus crimes wasn't the only
source of inconsistency in the reports. The legislative changes also
require colleges to disclose the number of campus disciplinary
referrals for violations of liquor, drug, and weapons laws. Referrals
differ from arrests in that they are handled by campus judiciary
boards, rather than by the local courts.

About one-fourth of the institutions included disciplinary referrals
for at least one of the three categories. A number of institutions
distinguished between arrests and referrals. But some lumped arrests
and referrals together, making their one-year increases in arrests
appear larger than they actually were.

Wake Forest University's report, for example, showed liquor arrests
skyrocketing from 8 in 1997 to 298 in 1998.

In preliminary tabulations, that increase put Wake Forest among the
five institutions in The Chronicle's survey with the highest increase
in drug arrests. But in response to a question from The Chronicle,
Wake Forest indicated that it had made only one liquor arrest. The
other 297 were referrals.

"There was a lot of confusion last year over what 1998's report was
supposed to include. So there are a lot of hybrids out there," says
John King, president of the International Association of Campus Law
Enforcement Administrators, and director of public safety at Tufts
University.

Some health researchers acknowledge that reporting changes might
explain some of the increase. But they say that campus officials
shouldn't ignore the likelihood that the growth also reflects
increased substance abuse.

For example, Henry Wechsler, director of college-alcohol studies at
Harvard University's School of Public Health, has found that while the
number of students who drink alcohol is declining, those who do so are
consuming more alcohol than ever.

Likewise, Lloyd D. Johnston, a senior research scientist at the
University of Michigan, says the studies he has conducted on drug use
among high-school seniors suggest that usage among college students
may be on the rise.

In 1992, 27 percent of the 12th graders he surveyed said that they had
used an illegal drug such as marijuana or cocaine in the past year. By
1997, that proportion had risen to 42 percent. Students from that 1997
group would be juniors in college today.

"The high-school students from the 90's are going to college and
bringing their drug habits with them," Mr. Johnston says.

The health researchers point out that students who abuse liquor and
illegal drugs often end up committing other crimes, like aggravated or
sexual assault.

Many campus police officers say that 1998's 11.3-percent increase in
forcible sex offenses (including rape, fondling, and sodomy) does not
suggest a true rise in the number of incidents, but rather more
diligent reporting by the victims and by campus police.

Even so, S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, a
campus-crime watchdog group in King of Prussia, Pa., says the numbers
don't give a true picture, because sex offenses are still among the
most underreported crimes. The most important thing that colleges can
do, says Mr. Carter, is let victims know that "someone from the
college will be with them through the whole process. Not enough
colleges do that."

In 1998, the number of nonforcible sex offenses -- which by F.B.I.
definition includes only incest or statutory rape -- rose 27.2 percent.

Campus-safety experts say they don't know what to make of that
increase, because the category traditionally has been one of the most
misunderstood, with many campuses including reports of peeping Toms,
indecent exposure, and even obscene phone calls.

In 1998, there were 20 murders reported by 17 campuses, up from 18
murders on some of those same campuses or others the year before.

In many cases, those murders occurred near the campus but not on it,
and did not involve students or campus employees.

While the number of aggravated assaults increased slightly, up 2.8
percent, campus police point out that the number of such crimes has
remained relatively steady in recent years.

Other crimes have continued to drop. In 1998, burglaries fell 5.6
percent, motor-vehicle thefts 2.6 percent, and robberies 2.9 percent.

The legislative changes in 1998 also called on institutions to include
incidents of manslaughter, arson, and hate crimes, effective in their
1999 reports. Many campuses have been reporting those figures for many
years.

Only one campus -- Washington State University -- reported a
manslaughter in 1998. Over all, the nation's colleges experienced a
16.9-percent increase in arson and a 15.5-percent increase in hate
crimes.

While some crimes increased in 1998 at double-digit percentages, the
number of weapons arrests increased at a much slower pace, just 0.5
per cent in 1998, compared with 4.4 percent in 1997.

Yet some individual institutions experienced high weapons-arrest
numbers. Five institutions -- Michigan State, Berkeley, University of
North Carolina at Charlotte and at Greensboro, and San Jose State
University -- reported 20 or more arrests for weapons violations.

Michigan State reported the most weapons arrests, 49, up about 58
percent from 1997.

Bruce Benson, Michigan State's police chief, says most of the arrests
were for misdemeanors. In many cases, the weapons, typically knives,
are carried onto campus by an outsider. Few arrests, if any, were for
guns.

"We're not having shootings and stabbings. We're getting to the guns
pretty quickly. The violence isn't there. The weapons are."

Chief Benson acknowledges that Michigan State, like many large
institutions, has high numbers in a variety of crime categories. But
with more than 40,000 students, he notes, it would be hard not to.

"I just can't believe that some of those same levels don't exist
elsewhere," Chief Benson says. "Either they're not reporting
correctly, or they're not going about enforcement aggressively enough."