ISU Bengal

Issue date: 10/17/07 Section: News

19 year-old Jeanne Clery was brutally raped and murdered while asleep in her Lehigh University Dorm room, which gave rise to the act named in her honor.

ISU is still a relatively safe place to live and participate in higher education, according to the recently release 2007 Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Crime Statistics. The report showed a 40 percent drop in forcible sex offenses, a 72 percent rise in alcohol citations, and a 53 percent drop in traffic accidents in 2006 as compared to 2005 statistics. The total number of crimes reported on campus remained constant at 180, maintaining the 37 percent drop in on-campus crime seen from 2004 statistics. The ISU-Idaho Falls campus had no reported crimes in 2006.
"This campus is fairly safe," said Terrilee Hancock, Operations Manager at the ISU Public Safety Office.
According to Hancock, most variations in the crime statistics from year to year, especially ones such as are seen in the current Jeanne Clery report, can be attributed to normal fluctuations in crime rates from year to year.
"It fluctuates a bit," Hancock said. "We do, however, have a focus on enforcing the alcohol policy."
Alcohol violations rose from 11 in 2005, to 19 in 2006. There were also 24 disciplinary referrals for alcohol violations in 2006, up from the 17 reported in 2005. A majority of both the disciplinary referrals and arrests occurred in ISU housing complexes.
According to a previous interview with Public Safety Director Steve Chatterton, the tendency towards issuing more disciplinary referrals as opposed to arrests for alcohol violations is due to a longstanding Public Safety policy.
"Our policy has been unchanged for 10 years or so," said Chatterton during an interview in October of 2006. "If we have an alcohol violation where the student has not had prior violations of this nature and is cooperative, we usually refer the matter to the dean of students. If they aren't cooperative or have prior offenses we refer them to the Pocatello Police Department."
Hancock reiterated Public Safety's current use of this same policy, stating that the conditions of the alcohol violation, the attitude of the offender, as well as the status of the offense (whether it was a first offense or not) played a major role in determining whether or not the Pocatello Police Department would be contacted.

Continued...

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