This story was researched and written collaboratively by Bison beat reporters Jordan Doyle and Hannah Moore.
At the end of March 2015, Student Life hosted its first Transparency Chapel in Cone Chapel. During that discussion, students posed questions regarding sexual assault and reporting on campus.
“Not reporting assault is a national issue, and it is an issue at Harding,” senior Jennifer Wright said. “I argued (at the panel) that the Student Life Office did not seem like a safe place to report assault because there is not immunity for the victim.”
Under-reporting crime is a nationwide problem. In 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics said that 42 percent of all crimes do not get reported. An online survey, conducted by the Bison on April 20-23, asked students three questions about the reporting of sexual assaults on Harding’s campus. Results showed that 53.5 percent of the 215 students surveyed said they would be either extremely unlikely or unlikely to report a sexual assault on campus if the situation implied their own violation of Harding regulations.
The violations could be drinking alcohol, being in the bedroom of someone of the opposite gender, or any one of the rules listed out in the student handbook. In response to the survey results, Zach Neal, assistant vice president for student life, said he wants students to know that their safety comes first when a crime is reported, even if rules have been broken.
“We have top priorities: safety and security and privacy of information,” Neal said. “Our goal is for students to feel safe, for students to feel safe reporting, and for students to know that we’ll pursue due diligence in following up on a report — at the same time being mindful of their privacy and their need for information to remain private.”
If a student breaks one of Harding’s rules while being a victim or a witness to a crime, the student does not necessarily have immunity for the violation. However, Neal said the whole situation is taken into account before any kind of decision is made regarding disciplinary actions.
“We encourage everyone to come forward with situations that have threatened their safety or security,” Neal said. “We definitely want all students to feel comfortable reporting. We take all extenuating circumstances into consideration before any kind of decision is made. Our first response is to make sure that the student is in a safe situation.”
Craig Russell, director of Public Safety, said one of Public Safety’s main goals is to make students feel comfortable reporting crimes.
“When it comes to reporting crimes on campus, it is really important for us to have a good relationship with the Harding community, because we encourage the accurate and quick reporting of all crimes to our office on campus,” Russell said. “Our goal is that we want people to come to us. We work really hard to build the kind of relationship with our students that they will trust us and come to us when they face a situation.”
According to a New York Times article from April 26, experts have said that main reasons students choose not to report crimes include fears of suspension, investigation and scholarship loss. Page 12 of Harding’s student handbook states that students who voluntarily confess an involvement with alcohol will “be afforded an opportunity to submit to a range of (disciplinary) possibilities up to but not including suspension or expulsion.”
Despite this statement in the handbook, sophomore social work major Chloe Goodman said she believes most students are still fearful of reporting crimes that include violating Harding’s code of conduct.
“Something I know for sure is that students are terrified of reporting sexual assaults or harassments if the incident involves any alcohol at all,” Goodman said. “This means that some students have been able to sexually exploit and blackmail their peers because there is alcohol present at the time … Harding does not grant immunity, so I’m sure there are many (victims) who have not come forward.”
Neal said that the administration is mindful of this fear students have, and that he wants to remove any barriers between students and administration in order to make students feel more comfortable reporting crimes.
“I want (students) to feel at ease in coming to me, especially when they are in a tough situation,” Neal said. “We currently have multiple ways for students to report: online, in person, (on the) phone. We’ll meet them outside our office if an office is not the best environment, and we are willing to respond during the night.”
Neal said that once a crime is reported, Public Safety and the Office of Student Life work closely together in order to resolve the issue. If the crime happens on campus, it is required by law under the Clery Act that the crime be included in an annual public crime report document. The Clery Act, passed in 1990, requires that all universities that receive federal funding share information regarding crime on campus. According to Russell, there is a daily crime log kept by Public Safety that documents all crimes that are reported on campus. Harding’s crime report is compiled once a year from daily logs kept by Public Safety.
The crime report, which can be found on Harding’s website under the Public Safety tab, currently includes crime statistics from 2012-2014 and is updated every year. Starting in the 2013 section, there are more subcategories for crimes due to Congress’ reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013. This Act included amendments to the Clery Act, requiring universities to add categories in reports. Before 2013, there were only two categories of sexual offenses: forcible and non-forcible. After the VAWA was passed, rape, fondling, incest and statutory rape were all added under sex offenses.
Russell said that Public Safety only tracks the types of crimes that the federal government requires all universities to track. For example, burglary is required to be documented, but theft is not.
“We are required to report very specific categories of crimes,” Russell said. “We keep a crime log of any crime that is reported to our campus…If a crime is reported to us and that crime is in one of those statistical areas, we’re required to report it. They always get reported.”
Public Safety is not required to include crimes that happen to students off campus, according to Russell. In the crime report, there are three sections for the locations of crimes: on campus, non-campus, and public property. Non-campus locations refer to property that is owned by the university but is not on campus. Public property locations refer to the streets and sidewalks that are adjacent to the university. If a crime is committed in a place that does not fit any of these locations, Public Safety does not include it in the crime report.
Russell said that Public Safety will, however, do its best to help victimized students in whatever way it can. Neal said the Student Life Office would do the same for those students.
In the Bison survey, 84.7 percent of students said they did not know how to report a sexual assault crime. Neal said that if a student needs to report an on-campus or off-campus crime as a victim or a witness, meeting with a Student Life dean or a Public Safety officer is best.
“We ask students to report on-campus and off-campus crimes in the same way,” Neal said. “This allows Public Safety to inform students of their rights and help walk them through the process. It also allows Student Life to help put students in contact with mental or physical healthcare professionals.”
Neal said that if students are fearful of reporting crimes to administration, they should feel free to take advantage of the deans’ open door policy.
“We ask that students come to us with any ideas that would help them and others feel more at ease when reporting,” Neal said.
As part of this report, head web editor Hunter Beck examined and analyzed policies from the student handbook concerning sexual crime reporting. What he found can be read at “Breaking down sexual crime and reporting policies found in the student handbook.”
