These Colleges Have Had The Most Sexual Assaults In The Past Decade

In 1990, U.S. Congress passed the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that receive federal financial aid to keep and disclose information regarding crime on or near their respective campuses.

One of the intended goals of the law is to make schools responsible for monitoring the crime activity of their communities and keep their students and students’ families informed. With that purpose in mind, StartClass decided to examine the data for a specific type of campus crime—on-campus forcible sexual assault*.

Using data from the Office of Postsecondary Education’s Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool, we have compiled a list of colleges that had the most reported forcible sexual assaults on campus per 1,000 students from 2003 to 2013, the most recent year in the dataset. The Office of Postsecondary Education is a division within the U.S. Department of Education.

As the Office of Postsecondary Education notes, these statistics represent “alleged criminal offenses reported to campus security authorities and/or local law enforcement agencies. Therefore, the data collected do not necessarily reflect prosecutions or convictions for crimes.” This data is not directly comparable to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System, which only collects statistics from police authorities.

It is worth noting that, according to the Justice Department, the vast majority of campus sexual assaults are not reported to the police.

For this list, we focused on the main campuses of national research universities. With this in mind, we only included schools with at least 5,000 students.

Note: the term “forcible sexual assault” applies to acts taken forcibly and/or against a person’s will, or in cases where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his or her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity (i.e. unconsciousness due to intoxication). Examples of non-forcible sex offenses include incest or statutory rape.

#25. UC Davis

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.6845

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 231

#24. Plymouth State University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.6863

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 43

#23. University of Maine

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.6891

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 87

#22. Bradley University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.6971

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 45

#21. University of New Hampshire-Main Campus

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7219

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 119

#20. Tufts University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7257

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 81

#19. University of Rhode Island

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7337

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 127

#18. University of Dayton

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7353

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 87

#17. University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7718

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 95

#16. University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.7760

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 53

#15. Westfield State University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8108

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 50

#14. Harvard University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8266

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 241

#13. University of Redlands

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8287

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 41

#12. SUNY College at Plattsburgh

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8346

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 57

#11. Stanford University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8450

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 174

#10. Emory University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8651

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 123

#9. Northern Michigan University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8748

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 90

#8. California State University-Monterey Bay

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8852

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 44

#7. Yale University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.8923

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 113

#6. Brown University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.9392

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 87

#5. University of Rochester

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 0.9930

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 104

#4. Ramapo College of New Jersey

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 1.0085

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 64

#3. Vanderbilt University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 1.0531

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 140

#2. Princeton University

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 1.5316

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 124

#1. Dartmouth College

• Forcible on-campus sex offenses per 1,000 students: 2.3356

• Total forcible on-campus sex offenses: 153

Read more:

• Stanford Rape Case Stands Out From Most Sexual Assaults