How many IU students are victims of sexual violence each year?
That’s one of the questions the recently released Annual Security Report attempts to answer.
The report is prepared each year by the IU Police Department in partial fulfillment of federal requirements under the 1990 Clery Act.
The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities receiving federal funding to disclose crime statistics on and around campus, to take steps to ensure campus safety and to inform the affected public of crimes that occur on and around campus.
Though the original legislation was passed in 1990, the Clery Act was revised and expanded in 2013 with the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
In order to protect the privacy of victims, campus crime reports include only dates of crime reports, dates on which crimes occurred and the general locations at which crimes took place.
The text messages, emails and automated phone calls you receive any time a robbery, mugging, rape or other crime is reported on or near campus fulfill part of the federal Clery Act requirements.
The Editorial Board has some questions about the categories and definitions used in the 2015 Annual Security Report, particularly about the changes in the categories of crimes for which statistics are provided, including crimes of sexual violence, between 2013 and 2014.
For example, while the 2012 and 2013 statistics include instances of reported “Sex Offenses, Forcible” including “Rape, Sodomy, Sexual Assault with an Object, Fondling” and two categories of “Sex Offenses, Non Forcible,” or incest and statutory rape, the 2014 statistics break these categories down and remove sodomy and sexual assault with an object.
The 2014 categories of sexual violence for which statistics are provided are rape, fondling, incest and statutory rape.
How are readers of the report supposed to be able to compare 2014 statistics with those of earlier years, given that the reported categories have shifted so dramatically?
If someone unfamiliar with reading statistics didn’t notice the change, they might assume sexual crimes have gone down, given that the rape category of 2014 is significantly smaller than the “Sexual Offenses, Forcible” category of 2013.
But if one were to combine all the sexual assault categories of 2014 to replicate the 2013 category, the numbers have significantly increased.
This might be caused by an increase of reporting these crimes, but the data makes it seem like sexual assault is on the decline.
We wonder if the change in categories has anything to do with the Title IX compliance investigation the federal government opened regarding IU in spring 2014.
Title IX is federal legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. Among other areas, it includes protections against sexual harassment and sexual violence in educational institutions.
On May 1, 2014, IU responded to the investigation by the U.S. Department of Education with an official statement that claims there were, at that time, “no complaints against IU-Bloomington that would have triggered an investigation” and that the purpose of the investigation was simply to “determine areas for improvement under Title IX.”
This Editorial Board questions how much the University actually wants public input on IU’s handling of issues of sexual violence on campus.
The Annual Security Report claims a policy discussion on the new university sexual misconduct policy and procedures took place on an unspecified date sometime during the past year and this discussion was open to the entire university community.
How many people in the IU community, though, actually knew about the discussion before it took place?
We wonder why this and many of the other initiatives outlined in the report were not better advertised by the current administration.
Does IU actually want to have campus-wide discussions about sexual violence, or is the administration just trying to present an appearance of compliance with federal requirements?
This Editorial Board encourages all members of the IU community to read the Annual Security Report and to familiarize themselves with their rights under Title IX and the Clery Act.
Even if IU doesn’t want to have a campus-wide conversation about sexual violence with us, we can — and should — still have that conversation amongst ourselves as a community.
