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Reports: Homecoming weekend leads to several security reports
Cross country: Grizzlies head into final regular season meet
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53 Friday, Oct. 14, 2016 | TheFranklinNews.com
Security report sees drugs numbers rise, sexual assaults level out
alcohol-related violations
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ASHLEY SHULER
ashley.shuler@franklincollege.edu
Each year, Security Director Steve Leonard puts together a campus safety report mandated federally. The report, called Clery Act, requires him to report drug, alcohol and weapon arrests and disciplinary referrals. Other crimes, like sex offenses and burglary, are also reported as statistics. This year, Leonard said there weren’t any “huge red flags.” The most noticeable increase, though, was in drug violations, which rose from seven in 2014 to 12 in 2015. Each of the 12 drug violations involved marijuana, Leonard said. Nine of them took place in a residence hall, and there were three in college-owned parking lots. In addition, forcible sex offenses— defined in the uniform crime reporting handbook as sexual acts directed against someone against that person’s will or when an individual is “incapable of giving consent”—stayed relatively stagnant compared to last year’s jump. In 2013, there was one reported forcible sex offense. In 2014, that number bumped up to six. Last year, there were five. Leonard said it’s “encouraging” to see the numbers level off. “It’s still a terribly underreported crime,” Leonard said. “I don’t believe that there were only five sexual misconducts that happened on the Franklin College campus in 2015.” Each of the sexual assault incidents reported this year were relayed to security confidentially.
There are four people on campus who can confidentially report sexual misconduct: John Shafer, campus counselor; Sara Kinder, campus counselor; Leah Rumsey, campus minister; and Catherine DeCleene, student health services coordinator. Leonard gathers these instances to get the numbers right on the report.
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I would like them all to be zero, but I know that’s not a reality. There are going to be disciplinary referrals and crimes on every campus. – Steve Leonard, security director
He said he doesn’t receive names or specific details. Because of the ongoing interests on campus for sexual misconduct education programs and resources, Leonard said, he will keep the impact of those in mind when looking at the numbers next year. “As we encourage more people to report this behavior, I’m going to look at: Does this make our numbers go up? Go down because the behavior is happening less frequently?” he said.
The report’s numbers run one calendar year, from Jan. 1 to 12 Dec. 31, 2015. The report is broken drug-related violations up into four reporting 7 7 areas: on campus, 6 on-campus residence forcible sex offenses 5 hall, non-campus and 2 public property. 1 weapons violations 0 On campus includes 0 anything that Frank2013 2014 2015 lin College owns, like Old Main. On-camIn 2015, there were 47 alcohol-repus residence hall includes Elsey Hall, Dietz Center, lated violations on campus. Public property reports include areas Hoover-Cline, Johnson-Dietz, and the three campus homes, as well as the not owned by Franklin College, but Tau Kappa Epsilon and Lambda Chi touch the edge of campus. Public property numbers are not Alpha fraternity homes. The fraternity houses were bulldozed included and say “N/A” in the 2015 during the summer of 2015 and are report because the Franklin Police included half in the crime reporting Department did not provide the data. The Clery report only requires the data year. Non-campus reports include prop- college to make an effort to obtain the erties the college doesn’t own, but are public property data. It’s not manused exclusively by Franklin College dated for the report, Leonard said. In addition to the drug, sexual assault students. It includes the Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Kappa Delta Rho houses, and alcohol violations, the document as well as the Phi Delta Theta house includes two weapon violations—a category that normally sits at zero. that closed last April. Neither of the two weapon violations The fraternity chapter was suspended, in part, because of “a history listed on the report were violent situaof failing to adhere to organizational tions, Leonard said. One happened when a campus visstandards,” including the national itor had a hunting rifle on campus in alcohol-free housing policy. Leonard said he’s “interested to see” their truck, which isn’t illegal, just not if, after an entire calendar year of hav- allowed under college policy, he said. The second was a knife found in a ing these three fraternities without houses, if campus-wide alcohol viola- student room during an inspection tions go down in 2016. See “Security” page 5