With numbers spreading across six pages, Ball State has listedfour year's worth of criminal activity in its annual CleryReport.
In a mass e-mail sent Oct. 3, the Office of the Dean of Studentsdelivered crime and disciplinary statistics. The University PoliceDepartment compiled the number of oncampus crimes. The dean'soffice counted the number of students who violated liquor, drug orweapon-possession laws.
Several variables affect the statistics' accuracy, according tocampus officials. Dean of Students Randy Hyman said campusboundaries are not clear cut, and victims don't always reportcrimes.
"In many instances, a lot of cases go unreported," Hyman said."The challenge we face is trying to strictly define (campus)boundaries. I wouldn't say it's clear cut."
Current boundaries stretch north from White River Boulevard toMcKinley Avenue, then from Wheeling Avenue to Tillotson Avenue,Director of Public Safety Gene Burton said. Crimes that occurwithin these boundaries fall under the campus, non-campus andpublic-property sections of the Clery Report.
Private residences, however, are not included, Burton said.Because of this, the 1999 murder of Julian Brown at a Kappa AlphaPsi party on Bethel Avenue does not appear in the report.
"Sure, we can sit here and name all the loopholes whereinstances fell through the cracks," Burton said. "I think we'retrying to make sure that there are no cracks in the system and thatthe necessary information is published."
The Clery Act was enacted after the murder of college studentJeanne Clery. The act requires all universities participating infederal student-aid programs to list certain crimes occurringwithin campus boundaries.
The numbers appearing on the dean's Web site,www.bsu.edu/sa/dean, fulfill the 12 federally required categories,Hyman said.
Eight of those categories are violent crimes.
The report also lists motor-vehicle thefts, but the reportshould also require theft-larceny statistics, criminal justiceprofessor Bryan Byers said.
"What about theft," Byers said. "It's a very common crime oncollege campuses, and I don't see it here. It's not because BSUdoesn't want to release these numbers; it's because there's nowhere to put them."
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