Much Campus Crime Goes Unreported

I had this sad fact reinforced to me just this week. I applied for teaching job in a coed residential facility that serves a mixture of older juveniles and younger adults. I handed my application in on a Friday. The supervisor scanned my application as I stood there and set up an interview with me for the following Monday. I was told the following day, Tuesday that they wanted to hire me and that they wanted me to start the following Monday.

I was a little perplexed as to how they could have made the decision to hire me so quickly, as I knew they had not had time to check my references when the offer of hire was made to me. But I thought that maybe they had at least checked the fingerprint database- my fingerprints are on file in two different states as I'd had to have that done for prior teaching jobs. The job was something I wanted to do, so I took it, but in the back of my mind I was thinking...."Strange- and troubling..." from the viewpoint that if my minor child was a resident in that facility- I'd want to know the employees had been more carefully screened before being hired.

During the course of my first week, I heard one of the administrators refer to the fact that he knew as a well-known and established reality that there was rampant drug use, as well as "gambling, prostitution and "fight nights" occurring in the facility on a regular basis. I was SHOCKED. And when I expressed my shock to a colleague, she replied in a very blase tone, "Well you have to expect that kids this age will be having sex." I said, "Sure, sex is one thing but these young women ( I assumed it was the women selling themselves because the ratio of young women to young men at this place is 1 to 3- but who knows- maybe it's the guys selling themselves too) is another issue entirely. And the fact that the administration knows about this and in my mind is tacitly condoning it by allowing it to occur is inexcusable. She replied, "You need to understand- this kind of stuff goes on everywhere- it's going on in the dorms at the university too- everyone in town knows it. I don't understand why you're so shocked."
To which I replied, "And I don't understand why you're NOT shocked." She looked at me and said, "So are you going to quit? Because if you don't and you just do the job and take the money- won't you be "tacitly condoning it?"
To which I replied, "Oh hell no...I can't quit now...if anything this makes me know that I HAVE to work here- and believe me- there will be no tacit condoning going on in this quarter."

Because the whole thing pisses me off. And it's so ******* American- put on a good show and hide all the nasty little **** that is going on underneath. And it pisses me off that this segment of the population- people who have been marginalized and disenfranchised from the minute they were conceived (when their mothers couldn't access adequate prenatal care) is still being marginalized. And those who expect so much more for their own precious offspring and would NEVER stand for such an atmosphere of vice and corruption in which to try to have their own children function and be educated are bored by it and quite simply just don't give a crap.

An aside: None of these young people are being forcibly incarcerated- they have committed no crimes. Their only "problem" is that the public schools in their hometowns have been unable to educate them. You can look at that as being a problem with them, or a problem with the schools, or some of both, which is probably the closest to the truth- and I know because these are exactly the kids I watched being failed by the public schools over and over again, and that's exactly why I didn't pursue a job in the public schools this year. But the fact of the matter is that this is just one more latter day example of "Separate but unequal". And it makes me sick to my stomach that it's still going on...while being presented as a viable, and even somewhat "utopian" solution for these students.

Aidan
Aidan, I'm not shocked, but deeply saddened by the environment you found at your new job. It's obvious that something is changing on our campuses given the increase in violence we read about in the news. I don't think it's just "better reporting." It appears to be a family cultural change among so many young people who end up in trouble.

BBB

Sadly, I don't find any of this as surprising.

You may not find it surprising- but do you find it unacceptable enough to want to try to do something to change it?

Sure! Let's a ll write our congressional reps and demand the repeal of the Clery Act.

How would demanding the repeal of the Clery Act have a positive effect?

Because of our screwed up obsession with being #1. (And that isn't just limited to this issue)

The Clery Act requires schools to report crimes that happen on campus. Schools aren't going to report that data because if they do someone will request the data through the Freedom Of Information Act and a list will get produced. That list will rank schools from the lowest to highest crime rates (or the reverse) and no one wants to be anywhere near the bottom of that list.

Parents would look at such a list and incorporate it into their decision making process for where they send thier children to school. Any school on the bottom half of that list is going to be negatively impacted (from their perspective). Schools at the bottom lie because they want to move up. Schools at the top lie because they don't want to move down.

The same thing happens with Money Magazine's "Top 10 list of places to live" that they publish every year. Being in those top 10 lists brings money (and people with money) into those towns. That creates an incentive for them to fudge their numbers and not report crimes if they can get away with it. The same effect takes place on military bases, with public transportation systems, etc... This isame effect (although not with crime) is also behind at least some of the complaints against NCLB.

When the government collects stats those stats become public and when they become public people have a reason to fear being at the bottom and to cheat to be on top.

I don't really have a good answer for how we end the obsession and my remark about rescinding the Clery Act was largely in jest. We DO however, need to find a way to collect data and eliminate the negative connotations that it reveals. That is, IMO, the only way we're ever going to see useful data to actually correct the problems.

BBB- I'm saddened by what I found too. I'm just so tired of watching this particular demographic get shafted and handed second best (if you could even call it that much) as their lot over and over again by people empowered to give them better, if only they cared enough to.

And even if you only want to think about it selfishly- it's in all of our best interests to at least try to provide some measure of quality education to this specific and vulnerable group so that they can begin to try to become functional members of society, instead of predators because they have no other training or skills with which to make a living.

As far as the Clery act and reporting of crime goes, I guess I think the answer might be to take the reporting of the incidents out of the arena of influence of the institution that would have its reputation affected. What I'm saying is that if I were the victim of a crime on campus, I'd call the city police- and bypass the campus police entirely. Maybe that's what students should be counseled to do.