What crime statistics should parents and students request from a school before arriving on campus?
Requesting information from the college is one way to do it. The college is legally mandated to provide that information. I also suggest parents and students do their own research. The Department of Education compiles and makes available campus safety statistics by reporting criminal offenses for over 6,000 colleges and universities in the United States at the following Web site: http://ope.ed.gov/security/. Again, it is important to keep in mind that oftentimes these types of comparisons are not apples to apples, especially when you look at data from a large urban campus with a high percentage of commuter students and compare it to campus safety data from a suburban or rural campus with a large base of resident students. Another caveat is that a campus safety department that is doing a good job cracking down on crime on campus will report more crimes than a department that is asleep at the switch and reporting fewer crimes. Even though there are more crimes reported at the first campu
