By Conor Roche
Quinnipiac University released its Annual Security and Fire Safety Report last week that contains data of offenses that occurred at the school in 2016.
The report shows that while criminal offences were down, Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) offenses and arrests and referrals for disciplinary action were up from 2015.
The Annual Security Report is completed by the school each year to comply with federal law (Clery Act, Higher Education Act and VAWA), the school said in its report.
The school saw a drop in hate crimes in 2016, making it the second-straight year that the school saw a drop in the statistic. Hate crimes include larceny-theft, simple assault, intimidation and vandalism.
The one reported incident of intimidation in 2016 was race-related and the one reported incident of vandalism was due to religion. In 2015, the reported incident of intimidation was due to sex orientation, while the reported incident of simple assault was race-related and the incident of vandalism was due to religion. Of the four reported incidents of intimidation in 2014, three were religion-based bias and one was race/sex orientation related.
The security report “drug law” violations were the only disciplinary actions that led to an arrest in 2016. However, the number of drug law violation arrests doubled from 2015 from nine to 18.
Referrals for disciplinary action, which is just punishment from the school, showed an increase in referrals for illegal weapons possession and liquor law violations. The amount of drug law violations went down by one in 2016.
2016 is the first time in three years that the school had any referrals for illegal weapons possession.
The Clery Act was created in 1990, and it requires institutions to publish and distribute their Annual Campus Security Report by October 1 of each year. The act also requires schools to release statistics on reported crimes within their campus, offenses such as (but not limited to) murder, robbery and assault.
In 2014, it became required for schools to release data on reported domestic violence, dating violence and stalking within their campus.
Quinnipiac’s Department of Public Safety, Department of Human Resource, Department of Residential Life and the Office of Student Affairs provided the statistics to the report, according to the report.
Karoline Keith, who is Quinnipiac’s Clery compliance officer and investigator, believes that while some of the numbers are good, the report shows that there’s still some work to do at the school.
“Overall, I think these statistics show the continued effort by the entire Quinnipiac community to foster a safe and healthy academic environment,” Keith said in a brief comment. “However, any statistic other than zero in every column of the Clery Crimes Activity Report is a notice that efforts by our entire community need to continue.”