The National Council for Home Safety and Security ranked UC San Diego 71st out of the 243 colleges on its list of 2018’s Safest College Campuses in the United States. UCSD is ranked fifth in California and second in the UC system, with 13 violent crime and 418 property crime incidents on campus during the last year.
The ranking is based on the most updated data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting and the Campus Safety Security Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly all accredited institutions were included, except for colleges with less than 10,000 students and those that did not have enough data.
“Each school’s safety score was calculated by analyzing crimes reported by universities, including rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, motor vehicle theft, and arsons,” stated the National Council for Home Safety and Security. In addition, violent crime and property crime rates of the cities in which the institutions are located, as well as the number of law enforcement officers per 1,000 students in the institutions, also affected final safety scores.
Based on the statistics of UCSD’s most updated Annual Security & Fire Safety Report, in 2016, there were ten rape, seven fondling, five robbery, eight aggravated assault, 20 burglary, 23 motor vehicle theft, and seven arson incidents under the Criminal Offenses Reporting Table. Five domestic violence, ten dating violence, and nine stalking incidents are listed on the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) Offenses Reporting Table. Additionally, one weapons laws arrest, 199 drug abuse disciplinary referrals, and 908 liquor law disciplinary referrals are on the Arrests and Disciplinary Referrals Reporting Table.
The annual campus security report is also known as the Clery Report. The Clery Act, or the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Campus Crime Statistics Act, is a federal law requiring all U.S. institutions to disclose crime information on and around campuses.
“This act is named in memory of 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery,” the UCSD police webpage explains, “who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room on April 5, 1986. Jeanne’s parents, Connie and Howard, learned that there had been about 38 violent crimes on the Lehigh campus in the three years before her murder. They joined with other campus crime victims and persuaded Congress to enact this law.”
The security escort programs that the UCSD Police Department now offers to UCSD students, faculty, and staff include Safety Escorts; Triton Rides, a free nighttime shuttle service; and the Ride Along Program, in which applicants can “ride along with a campus police officer as he or she performs patrol duties on campus.”
The ranking of UC system colleges is as followed.
44 UC Irvine
71 UC San Diego
85 UC Davis
151 UC Santa Barbara
161 UC Riverside
162 UC Los Angeles
209 UC Berkeley
234 UC Santa Cruz
Cindy Zhan is a Staff Writer for The Triton.