An update of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Crime Statistics Act shows that there has been a significant increase of aggravated assaults and a significant decrease of burglaries in the past year.

There were 12 incidents of aggravated assault in 2003, according to the report. Statistics show that the number of aggravated assaults jumped 67 percent since then. The stats include all incidents that have occurred up to Sept. 27, 2005.

Nai Saechew, a senior, said that he is not concerned about the increase of aggravated assaults, but he doesn’t feel completely safe on campus.

“I think the campus needs more lighting. I’m always afraid of being attacked by a bum at night when walking to my car,” Saechew said.

Most of the aggravated assaults in the past year have occurred on public property, defined as the “university neighborhood,” including streets, sidewalks, parking lots and parks, within or near the campus.

The increase of aggravated assaults does bring some concern to the campus community.

Alvin Johnson, a senior majoring in health science, said that he is not concerned for himself but he is for others. “It makes me concerned for my girlfriend, but for me individually I can handle my own,” Johnson said.

This would include the two separate cases of assault of this semester where one male student was left with serious injuries after being struck in the face with a textbook, and another male student was left with minor injuries after he was robbed of his bike and wallet.

The number of burglaries has significantly decreased from 514 in 2003 to 117 in 2004. The majority of the burglaries have occurred on public property and 26 percent of them have occurred on-campus.

Motor vehicle theft has been decreasing also. There were 333 auto-thefts in 2003 and 253 in 2004.

Arson has gone up in the past three years. In 2002, there were no reports of arson, but for the past two years there has been two cases per year of arson.

Reports of forcible sex-offenses have decreased. There were 20 reports of these offenses in 2002 and only one was reported in 2004. There were no reports of non-forcible sex-offenses in the past three years.

Cases of assault, burglary and sex-offenses have not been based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability in the past three years.

Hate crimes, involving vandalism on walls, have occurred in the past three years. Similar hate crimes based on race and sexual orientation has gone down in the past year, but there have been two cases of crimes based on religion in 2004 instead of one case in 2003.

The number of arrests for drug violations nearly doubled from 2003 to 2004. There were 41 arrests for drug violation last year, with the majority of the arrests being on public property.

Arrests for weapon violations also nearly doubled from six violations in 2003 to 11 in 2004.The arrests for liquor law violations have gone down from eight in 2003 to two in 2004.

However, the statistics are solely based on reports of criminal behavior and Tony Platt, professor emeritus of social work, said it is difficult to come with a conclusion on why crime has gone up or down based on statistics alone.

“I don’t think you can make much of these figures, because whether or not crime is going up or down you have to look at it through several years and you have to take in account the way people report crimes,” Platt said. “Without knowing the trend over the several years and how people report crimes, it’s hard to make something out of these figures alone.

“The most accurate way to know why there is crime on campus or anywhere else is to ask representative samples if they have been victimized on campus over the last year because most people do not report crimes,” he said.

Nika Megina can be reached at [email protected]