Fuller disclosure

No one benefits when colleges under-report crime instead of putting the emphasis on crime fighting. From armed robberies to a student's shooting to the Halloween stabbing death of a talented researcher, there's been a scary spike in high-profile crimes around the West Philadelphia campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

So it's ironic, at best, to see how the university contorts the facts to paint a far more tranquil picture when it reports campus crimes under federal and state disclosure laws.

As Inquirer staff writer Michael Matza reported yesterday, fully 90 percent of the 1995 robberies that occurred in the area patrolled by Penn's security force were omitted from the campus-crime reports.

How so? Most of the crimes were categorized as off-campus, the hazards of venturing onto the city streets and pavements that crisscross and surround the Ivy League school.

That's an absurd distinction, but groups that monitor colleges' compliance with the campus crime reporting law say schools across the country cook the books in a similar manner. Crimes go unreported because they are classified as off-campus, and some serious crimes sexual assaults, for instance get shrouded in bureaucratic language. (One college reportedly lists rapes as "advances without sanctions.")

This all shows the shortcomings of well-intentioned laws designed to help students and parents size up the relative risks of campuses. An outgrowth of the murder of Jeanne Clery of Villanova at Lehigh University in 1986, the laws on campus crime disclosure clearly haven't lived up to the hopes of their sponsors. The U.S. Education Department, which has been charged by Congress with monitoring compliance, needs to set consistent guidelines for reporting or, if the problems can't be fixed, to lobby Congress to do away with the reporting requirement.

As noted, Penn isn't fooling anyone these days. Just ask the parents of students who attended a heated, parents' weekend session the other day in which Penn President Judith Rodin and Penn alum Ed Rendell, among others, were peppered with questions about crime.

None of this is to suggest the university is in denial about its crime problem. Its fiddling with figures has more to do with protecting image than ignoring substance. The university has augmented its sizable security force, and plans to spend $15 million annually on security. The main point is not to make sure Penn claims as its own more of the crimes that harm the quality of life on its campus. It's to make sure the university, as well as the city police and other institutions in West Philadelphia, work together to reduce the number of crimes anybody has to report.

—The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 26, 1996