MOST CAMPUS CRIME INVOLVES ALCOHOL, DRUGS

Alcohol and drug-related violations make up a large portion of the
crime on area college campuses during 2000 according to statistics
released by the U.S. Department of Education.

The annual campus security report is designed to give parents and
students information about crime on campus at all post-secondary
institutions, including two-year colleges, four-year colleges and
private career institutes.

Required as part of the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of
1990, this is the second year the data has been widely available
through the Internet. Data for almost 6,300 schools is listed, and
schools also must make current information available.

"The crime stats are getting better and more accurate," said Howard
Clery III, executive director of Security on Campus, a nonprofit
organization that monitors campus security.

The group was founded by Connie and Howard Clery after their daughter,
Jeanne Anne, was raped and murdered while asleep in her dorm at Lehigh
University in 1986. Students had been unaware of about 38 violent
crimes on campus in the previous three years, and the Clery's lobbied
for a law that would require crime information be made public.

Clery said larger colleges, which have campus police, have developed
systems to facilitate reporting, though he still wonders if they are
completely accurate. Smaller schools are still a problem, although
they are improving.

"We've had schools that were reporting no crime, which really is
impossible," he said. "Some are at least reporting two or three
incidents this year."

He said schools that do not have on-campus housing, such as community
colleges and career schools, tend to report less crime. Locally,
community colleges reported just a handful of incidents.

But if a college has no security department and no manual or procedure
for reporting, the accuracy is questionable, Clery said. He said
students can report schools they think are under-reporting and the
U.S. Department of Education will audit school records.

The College of New Jersey and Ramapo College were cited in 2000 and
2001, respectively, for inaccuracies, though the problems appeared to
be a breakdown in record-keeping rather than intentional misreporting.
Ramapo, for example, did not report 23 burglaries during 1998 because
they had been characterized as thefts.

Clery said colleges that report little crime, or seem defensive about
it, also are more likely to be abusive toward victims because they
just want the issue to go away.

"The purpose of the law was not just to report crime, but to help
schools monitor it, take action, become more proactive," he said.

Clery agreed that alcohol and drugs remain a big problem in campus,
especially because they tend to lead to other crimes, including rape,
assault and vandalism. Since most students are underage, more
violations occur.

"Freshmen are most at risk," he said. "But there is also more
awareness of the dangers."

Local colleges showed higher number of campus disciplinary actions
than actual arrests for alcohol. Many colleges will not arrest a
student who is drunk, but will take them before a campus disciplinary
board.

Rowan University does not allow alcohol in its residence halls, so a
student caught with liquor could be cited for an offense, said Dean of
Students Marguerite Stubbs. A more severe violation, such as a student
selling alcohol to underage students, could generate an actual arrest.
Three members of Rowan's public safety staff have police powers.

Harvey Kesselman, vice president for student and support services at
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, said campus police can
make arrests. Many complaints come from fellow students, and drug
problems are almost exclusively marijuana.

"There is less tolerance now by students for drunkenness and drugs,"
Kesselman said. "Peers are absolutely more willing to report
violations."

Keeping students informed of current crime trends is also a part of
the law, which requires that the public have access to the campus crime log.

Rowan University's annual crime report and its current police log are
posted on the college Web site.

Stockton's campus police provide a weekly police blotter to the school
newspaper, The Argo, which publishes stories based on the report,
co-editor-in-chief Dan Grote said.

"We won't include everything," Grote said. "We look for trends or
significant items like a large vandalism or anything that has an
arrest report, and we put them in as stories."

Clery encouraged parents and students to check crime statistics as
part of the college application process.

Stubbs said safety doesn't seem to be a major concern for parents and
students, most likely because Rowan is in a relatively rural setting
and is a safe school.

"Of course, we encourage students to be careful and live defensively,"
she said. "But when you have to drive past peach orchards to get to
campus, people don't see it as too dangerous."