As required by federal law, colleges and universities are releasing annual transparency reports for campus crimes and the rate of reported sexual assaults is going up.
According to the Huffington Post, this is a particularly encouraging trend since sexual assault is alarmingly underreported at colleges and universities across the nation. As required by the Clery Act, schools must disclose all campus crimes that took place in the past year and such reports were due by Oct. 1.
Occidental College, one of 30 schools in 2013 to receive a federal complaint for mishandling sexual assault cases, reported 12 such crimes in 2011 and 11 the following year. According to data in the most recent Clery Report, Occidental College reported 64 sexual assaults, which is nearly triple the total of 2011 and 2012 combined.
"We believe this substantial increase over last year's number is primarily due to increased awareness of Title IX issues and of reporting and support options at the College," Occidental said in a statement. "Of the 64 reports made in 2013, 34 involved conduct that occurred prior to 2013."
Dartmouth University, also the subject of a federal Title IX investigation, reported 35 sexual assault crimes in 2013, compared to 24 in 2012 and 15 in 2011. Intense public scrutiny and a task force organized by the President have contributed to making sexual assault a priority on college campuses.
Now that more schools are acting on reports from complainants, authorities can be held accountable on following through on investigating them. Another problem has been complainants who claim their case was not taken seriously and the investigation fell apart as a result.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in every five women in college experience sexual assault in some form, but only five percent report the crime. Still, it is estimated that two-thirds of all victims tell someone about the attack, just not an administrator, police officer or family member.
"We have strengthened the climate for reporting on campus," Dartmouth spokeswoman Diana Lawrence told the HP. "We want the number of reports from sexual assault survivors to go up, but the prevalence to go down."
