Colleges have secrerts too

Well…


This scares me just a little bit, today I was reading an article featured on the statesman.com http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/2009/09/19/0919campuscrime.html. Which as concludes, that Texas colleges do not report most of the crimes that happen at their campus’s or  around it . Meaning that many of us didn’t know that a fellow ACC peer of ours was stabbed in 2006 by the campus, where she attended school (Rio Grande campus). Shouldn’t this send red flags in your mind what else could the colleges be hiding from us(hmm maybe that all the money your parents are paying is not really going towards your education)?!

Its disturbing to think that on top of all of the other things we have to worry about. We have to worry about getting harmed at school, but could there be hope for us after all? Well there is a federal law known as the Clery Act requires postsecondary institutions to shine a light on crime and security issues. They must maintain a daily crime log open to inspection by anyone and update it within two days of learning about an incident. Schools also must produce an annual security report with crime data and descriptions of everything from their efforts to prevent sex offenses to programs that focus on alcohol abuse. While some campus’s are not required for information about the crime are committed do not go online for the public to see (hmm maybe future students who are considering the school.)

They are required to follow other standard rules…While the University of Texas sends out daily e-mails on campus crime, the most current summary of annual crime statistics available online is from 2007 this is a scary thought. In fact according to the article.

In a report last year, the state auditor's office concluded that 17 of the state's 35 public universities did not include all the required information in their annual security reports. Two schools did not produce the reports at all. And two of six universities whose daily crime logs were examined by the office did not track the date and time of crimes and the disposition of complaints as required.

Now while many people this this isn’t a big deal, think again this is a huge deal when your parents send you off to school, they expect you to come home in one piece, alive and breathing. They don’t want a call informing them that they’re child, they thought they sent to a safe place was harmed in a life threatening way. So when viewing a 4 year university to transfer too. Don’t be afraid to ask some questions about the crime rate and the violence against students, because honestly when you get your degree, I’ am pretty sure you want to be alive to put it to some good use.