The original version of the 2013 Clery Crime Report that was emailed to the campus community on Sept. 30 by UNA Chief of Police Bob Pastula contained a numerical error in the category of forcible sexual offense. The report will be corrected to contain accurate numbers before  being submitted to the federal government on Oct. 16, as misreporting could cost $35,000 in fines, he said.

In the report, five forcible sexual assaults are recorded for the year of 2012, though this number is actually three, with the one on campus crime occurring in the parking deck last September, as indicated by UNA’s crime logs.

The other two recorded acts occurred at what the report refers to as non-campus locations, which are defined as university locations not geographically connected to a campus, according to the report. These crimes cannot be found in the university police’s monthly crime logs and the police were not aware of their occurring until after the fact, Pastula said.

“The information found in the crime logs is stuff that occurred on campus, and also pertains to anything that campus police responded to,” Pastula said. “Those two non-campus assaults are student-on-student events that did not happen on campus and we did not respond to them because we were not aware.”

Although the police were unable to respond to the two crimes, they were investigated, appear in the annual Clery Crime Report and do not appear in the crime logs, Pastula said. 

The Clery Act does not require records of off campus crimes to be displayed in the annual report, since these are often out of the campus’ jurisdiction. Campus police will investigate any crimes relevant to the campus community, Pastula said. 

“That’s per the guidelines of Clery,” said Vice President of Student Affairs David Shields. “It’s not that we would hide (an off campus crime). Clery was designed to provide people with crime statistics for the campus and places that the university has had control of.” 

Officials are being conservative with recording what crime happens off campus, since so many students live off campus, Shields said.

“We deal with off-campus behavior, it’s in our code of conduct,” Shields said. “As a university we will deal with the off campus behavior of our students if it has a negative and adverse affect on the university and if it’s student on student. So again, it may not be reported here but that does not mean that we are not going to deal with it as a university.”

Katie Evans, a sophomore, said that, due to events from the previous school year, she does not feel safe on campus.

“With everything that happened last year, it doesn’t really look like officials are doing much to prevent those same things from happening again, and even if they are, they aren’t doing anything to make the students feel more safe,” Evans said. “Living in Lagrange, I feel a little safer than I would living in Rivers or Rice. I’m afraid to park in the parking deck after dark, and I’m generally afraid to leave my building at night alone, even to just take my trash to the dumpster or get food or something like that. “

She was unaware of events like Breakfast with the Chief, which Pastula hosts monthly to meet with students about campus safety. She also wishes that officials would do more events on campus to outwardly show that they are concerned about campus safety, she said.

“The only thing we can really see that they’re doing is SNAP, which isn’t even really a thing most of the time any more,” Evans said. “The golf cart is usually just sitting outside unattended. And like I said, I’m sure they are actually doing more than that, but they aren’t really doing much for the students to see for themselves and help them to be a little more at peace here.”

As a male, Austin Park, a sophomore, said he feels safer on campus but also believes that the university is working hard to protect students.

“I feel like UNA has a very safe community surrounding the campus,” Park said. “I also feel like the police have a very quick response time.”