American Association of University Women

May 10, 2017

2015 Clery Act Numbers

Newly updated data required by the Clery Act indicate that the annual statistics collected by colleges and universities still do not tell the full story of sexual violence on campus. Many studies have found that around 20 percent of women are targets of attempted or completed sexual assault while they are college students, but less well known is that more than one in five college women experiences physical abuse, sexual abuse, or threats of physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner. AAUW’s analysis of the 2015 Clery data revealed the following:

• Eighty-nine percent of college campuses disclosed zero reported incidences of rape in 2015. With about 11,000 campuses providing annual crime data, an overwhelming majority of schools certified that in 2015 they did not receive a single report of rape.
• For the second year, we have access to new data regarding dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking incidents on campuses nationwide. For 2015, about 9 percent of campuses disclosed a reported incident of domestic violence, around 10 percent disclosed a reported incident of dating violence, and about 13 percent of campuses disclosed a report incident of stalking. So in each of these categories as well, most campuses did not disclose any reported incidents in 2015.
• Among the main or primary campuses of colleges and universities with enrollment of at least 250 students, 73 percent disclosed zero rape reports in 2015.
• The 2016 numbers show that campuses that reported one type of sexual violence often disclosed reports of other types. This suggests that some schools have built the necessary systems to welcome and handle reports, support survivors, and disclose accurate statistics — and others have not.

NOTE: This article was originally posted at https://www.aauw.org/article/schools-still-underreporting-sexual-harassment-and-assault/