TUPD releases security report

As required by the Federal Jeanne Clery Act of 1990, the Tulane University Police Department published annual crime statistics for the uptown campus Oct. 4.

The statistics include crimes that took place on campus and on public property immediately adjacent to campus. According to the TUPD report, there was a 38 percent reduction in crime on the uptown campus from 2007 to 2008.

John Lowery has worked with TUPD as a consultant to ensure it is in compliance with all aspects of the law, which involves disclosure of crimes on and around campus. The law does not require that universities keep record of crimes that happen to students while off campus.

“The genesis of the legislation was a concern about crimes that occurred on campus to students or others,” Lowery said. “Another pragmatic concern is the difficulty in tracking crimes which occur wherever students are. How would an institution even get this information?”

The law requires that the university inform all students and faculty of crimes that occur within a certain radius of campus. Only crimes that occur on campus, however, are published in the yearly crime report. This year’s report contains a lower statistic for the number of forcible sexual assaults than reported in 2007. This category includes both date rape and stranger rape. The lower number is a result of closer review of the confidential sexual assault reports.

“We were reporting confidential sexual assaults that occurred all over the place,” TUPD Captain Reid Noble said. “We are only supposed to report assaults in university-owned and controlled property.”

The statistics do not include many of the sexual assaults of students that occurred last year because they did not occur on campus.

“That belongs in [the New Orleans Police Department’s] report,” Noble said. “We work with NOPD to make sure neither of us… under reports. The NOPD stats are published on their Web site.

Assistant Dean of Students Erica Woodley said that the statistics probably do not accurately reflect the number of assaults occurring on campus because of under reporting.

“Sexual assaults are a completely under-reported crime by the victim,” Woodley said. “Statistics will never be accurate because we have a culture of punishing the victim.

Disciplinary referrals for alcohol violations more than doubled from 70 to 157. This increase is due to a combination of increased consumption on campus and the way student affairs documents these violations, Noble said.

“It’s the way student conduct is reporting it,” Noble said. “Just from being in charge of patrol and seeing alcohol violations on campus, I can say it has increased. And it’s not just this university.”

Noble said the spike in aggravated assault on campus in 2007 was related to some conflict among fraternities. The resolution of this issue is reflected in the statistics for 2008.