Zoe Covey
Contributing Writer
On Oct. 1, the College released an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report detailing statistics for crimes that occurred in 2016.
The report breaks down the number of offenses reported both by College staff and law enforcement officers that occurred on campus, on private property off-campus and on public property involving individuals related to the College. The way these offenses are defined is standardized across American colleges and universities by the Clery Act, which has required annual crime reports from post-secondary institutions since 1999.
The College’s report documents liquor law violations, drug law violations, sex of-fenses, burglary, arson, dating violence and stalking that occurred in 2016. No robberies, aggravated assaults, incidents of weapon possession or hate crimes were reported.
Drug and liquor violations represent most of the offenses committed. However, the number of arrests for both liquor and drug law violations decreased significantly in 2016. Three arrests were made for liquor violations, compared to the 20 in 2014. Meanwhile, there were 40 arrests for drug violations, compared to the 51 in 2014. This continues a four-year trend where the number of arrests made by the Wooster Police Department (WPD) on campus have decreased by 61 percent, decreasing each year since 2013.
Although the number of arrests decreased, the number of disciplinary referrals remained consistent. Although only Wooster police officers conduct arrests, disciplinary referrals can be issued as a result of a report by any staff member of the College, including Resident Assistants (RA) and Security and Protective Services (SPS) officers. SPS does not report some types of offenses — including liquor violations — to WPD officers so these referrals give more detail about how trends change from year to year.
Joe Kirk, associate director of SPS, gave the number of disciplinary referrals for drug law violations as an example. The number of referrals almost doubled between 2015 and 2016 — going from 21 to 39 offenses. While acknowledging that some year-to-year changes could occur with no relation to an overall increase in crime, Kirk said that these changes could guide efforts aimed at reducing crime on campus.
“Some years you will see higher [numbers] than others,” Kirk said. “[But] we don’t just tally the numbers, we also look at what we can do to address some of the concerns.”
With the large number of drug violations documented by college staff, Kirk said that SPS was considering improved educational programs to make sure that the campus was aware of drug policies not only of the College, but of the state of Ohio as well.
“We’re trying to figure out how we can do more education on [drug] issues, particularly in first-year halls,” Kirk said. “A lot of times people aren’t aware of Ohio law versus the states they come from, so that’s a piece of education we need to be sure to address earlier on.”
Kirk said that educational efforts were also a key part of the College’s effort to reduce sexual misconduct on campus. While he maintained that it was difficult to assign a cause, he did note that reports of sexual offenses had decreased in 2016. In particular, reports of forcible sex offenses, including rape, decreased from 10 in 2015 to five.
Colleen Gilfether ’18, co-president of k(no)w, a student organization advocating against sexual violence on campus, agreed that new educational programming could have played a part, but suggested another factor that she believed made it difficult to say that these efforts reduced the number of offenses last year.
“I would hesitate to point toward [year-to-year variability], because that dismisses, or at the very least fails to consider the instances of non-reported statistics,” Gilfether said. “As far as the pattern changing due to educational measures, institutional measures to inform students on issues of sexual violence [have improved], but much more could be done.”
The Annual Security and Fire