Crime on college campuses reverts to pre-pandemic levels as students fear for safety
At least three female Arizona State University students were allegedly sexually assaulted by a "random stranger" in public areas of the Tempe campus in a 30-minute span.
It was described as "an isolated incident" on April 11 by the university in a statement to Fox News Digital, but it's an isolated incident for ASU, not the country, where a national spike in on-campus crimes has reverted to pre-pandemic highs, according to the Department of Education statistics.
At the end of February, four college students were murdered in a 10-day span, and just over the last week, two Appalachian State students allegedly stabbed a classmate, and Michigan State University reported a sexual-orientation-motivated assault in the campus library.
Plus, antisemitic attacks on college campuses are on a "drastic" rise since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) said in a statement pushing a bipartisan bill to combat antisemitism on campuses.
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There were 38,303 reported criminal offenses at colleges and universities in 2022, which is the federal government's latest data based on 5,783 institutions with 10,530 campuses.
To put the number in perspective, there were about 21,200 reported incidents in 2020, according to a September 2023 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.
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Before that, the number of on-campus crimes decreased by 15% (32,100 to 27,200) between 2010 and 2019, the report says, before it bottomed out during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
As students returned to on-campus learning, criminal activity picked back up (as seen in the bar graph below), which is fueled by sex crimes, according to the report.
"It's terrifying," ASU student Addison Gleason told Fox 10 in Phoenix after his female classmates were attacked. "Definitely makes it scary, especially when there’s a lot of people that walk around, like, late at night."
Front and center of the campus crime debate is the University of California, Berkeley, arguably one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and the so-called SafeBears, a group of more than 1,300 California parents and community allies working together to protect university students, their website says.
The SafeBears said on their site that there is a "significant increase" in violent crime in and around the campus.
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That includes several shootings (one was fatal), gunpoint robberies and a stabbing near university housing. There was also a reported rash of break-ins.
So they took safety matters into their own hands by reaching into their wallets and ultimately shelling out $40,000 to hire private security, which sparked a contentious feud with university leaders.
The pilot program ended on March 23, and university leaders don't seem to want the program to return.
A spokesperson from UC Berkeley told Fox News Digital in a previous interview, "Hiring private security raises a number of concerns including the training and experience of individuals hired by such firms."
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But even Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who was a believer in the "defund the police" movement and cut almost $10 million from the police budget in 2020, created a crime preventative coalition two months ago.
During a February press conference, he acknowledged the increase in criminal activity and said it's important to "deter crime, and hold these individuals accountable."
Experts haven't reached any definitives conclusions about what's fueling the rash of on-campus crimes that seem to headline news outlets every day across the country.
Many point to a full return to school, with the pandemic in the rearview mirror, as a contributing factor, as well as overseas hostilities, such as the Hamas invasion of Israel.
Oddly enough, violence, particularly murder, dropped in the U.S. in 2023 and continues to decline in 2024, according to crime analyst Jeff Asher, despite several surveys and polls that show as many as 75% of Americans believe crime is still climbing.
"Murder is down around 20 percent in 2024 in more than 180 cities with available data this year compared to a comparable time frame last year" Asher wrote in an April 4 post on Jeff-alytics.
"Murder is down 20.5 percent in 183 cities with available data through at least January, down 20.2 percent in 174 cities with data through at least February, and down 20.8 percent in 59 cities with data through at least March 20."
But colleges and universities seem to be on the reverse track, which has concerned parents – like the SafeBears – who are taking action.
"Beyond the private security pilot program, I think an organization like SafeBears is needed to hold the university and city accountable and to push for more safety measures," Victoria Cole, a UC Berkeley parent, told Fox News Digital in a previous interview.
It remains to be seen if on-campus crimes will even out, or if programs like SafeBears will become more common.