Abuses of Statistics
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Preparing to go to college is a major step in the lives of many people, and choosing which campus a student plans to spend the next four years takes a lot of consideration. One of the many factors considered is the safety of the campus, since no one wants to attend a campus where students are being assaulted, raped, or worse. The University of California's (UC) campuses have been viewed as safe campuses, undoubtedly because their own reporting shows that the incidences of attempted rapes and forcible sex offences are very low. However, the Sacramento Bee newspaper investigated the campuses and found that the campus' statistics did not reflect reality.
College campuses are required by law to report statistics on sex offenses to the FBI. The UC Davis campus reported only one sex offense between 1996 and 1999, Berkeley reported eight, and Riverside reported five. However, the Sacramento Bee, through its own investigation, found that 21 cases were reported to outside services like the police and rape centers in Davis, 82 in Riverside though the information is not complete, and Berkeley refused reporters access to their records (Hardy & Barrows, 2000).
Campus administrators admit that they do not audit campus crime statistics, and though required to report sex offenses, the reporting system is in disarray and the UC campuses are not synchronized with on another. In two-thirds of the campuses, a report is not filed unless the student goes to the campus police, UC Riverside say "men cannot be raped", and UC San Diego classifies sex assaults under "physical abuse" (Hardy & Barrows, 2000, pp. 1-2)...