The Data
How it Works
Required under the Clery Act, every postsecondary institution receiving federal aid must submit the number of reported crimes for specific incidents. The data is then processed by the federal government and posted publicly on the Campus Safety and Security website. This project took all the data from the Campus Safety and Security website regarding postsecondary institution’s crime rates from 2009 to 2017 and combined all the data into one succinct file. Information regarding the processing and cleaning of the data can be found here.
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The publicly posted data does not have any personally identifiable information. Besides the number of crimes occurring on or near campus, the only other data offered involves the institution itself.
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While the federal government tries its best to report accurate information, it is important to note that there are some inherent flaws. For example, the total enrollment data appears to indicate the number of undergraduate students on campus which is not the case. Total enrollment is actually referring to all students enrolled in the undergraduate program including online students. Champlain College has a total on campus undergraduate enrollment of approximately 2000 students. According to Clery Act data, Champlain College has a total enrollment of 4000 students. This is due to Champlain College’s online program, where students could never have contact with campus life therefore skewing perceptions of the data. Additionally, Champlain College is reported to have a total enrollment of 4000 students on Montreal and Dublin campus, again giving the wrong impression that our school has a massive study abroad program. These other campus locations are just reporting the total enrollment of the institution as a whole, not their campuses.
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In addition to the errors in the Clery Act’s reporting, there is also an inherent flaw with reporting sexual violence in general. Many researchers believe that sexual violence rates are being underreported. The documentary The Hunting Ground also revealed that not every college makes it easy to report crimes related to sexual violence. This means many postsecondary institution’s reported crimes could be drastically understated. Despite all these flaws, this data does cover most postsecondary institutions and gives a good attempt to report a massive amount of data to the public.