By Ariana De La Garza
As the Clery reports containing information from universities about the crimes reported for the year have been released, changes in the results from previous years are being looked at and addressed by each university. Kansas State University’s report contained mostly a decrease in the crimes from previous years although the changes are not as significant when compared to other universities.
When Kansas State University who currently has 22,785 students enrolled was compared to the University of Tennessee Chattanooga with 10,781 students enrolled, and Colorado State University with 28,466 students enrolled it was shocking to see that K-State had an increase in rape crimes that occurred on-campus by 66.6 percent. All of the rape crimes reported in the Clery report for Kansas State had been committed at a university residential facility.
Brooke Clark, a senior in animal science, when showed the Clery report data about the increase in rapes said, “I always felt safe when I lived in the dorms here on campus, it’s so sad that here at K-State where we are supposed to be a family crimes like this one is increasing.”
The other two schools saw a decrease in rape crimes occurring on-campus by 40 percent and 35.3 percent, they also saw a decrease in the number of rape crimes committed in a university residential facility.
Alan Mick, a junior in business, had heard of the Clery report before from a previous class that he took but was not aware of the current data from this year’s report. “I have a friend that knew someone that had been raped on campus and I couldn’t imagine how horrible that was and the fact that there are more reports of it happening compared to last year is just sad and embarrassing,” Mick said.
When looking at all three of the universities data regarding burglary all had seen a decrease in the number of crimes. Kansas State University saw a decrease of 50 percent in the last year, while the University of Tennessee Chattanooga saw a decrease of 33.3 percent.
Charlsie Fowler, senior in apparel and textiles, commented about how safe she feels on campus, “I feel that K-State students are very honest, good people and seeing that burglaries have decreased from the data here just proves that.”
Colorado State University when compared to the other two schools saw the largest decrease at 70.6 percent. When an attempt to contact Senior Public Relations Coordinator Dell Rae Ciaravola to talk about why Colorado State has seen such a large decrease in burglary crimes, he was not available to comment.
Universities release their Clery report data on Oct.1 of each year. More information regarding the Clery Act and what information universities must report can be found here.
