A change in the application of the term "burglary" is affecting the way colleges and universities nationwide report crime statistics, which has broad implications for the accuracy of school's safety rankings.
The change, which went into effect at Tufts last year, does not require campus police to report incidents of theft as burglaries unless there is proof of unlawful entry. If there is no proof of trespassing, the crime can be classified as larceny, which does not need to be reported.
Although the impact of the change was not as pronounced at Tufts, Harvard University's reported number of burglaries between 2008 and 2009 fell by over 90 percent, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Tufts reported 29 burglaries in 2009, as compared to 43 the previous year when the old guidelines were in effect, Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said in an e−mail to the Daily.
"Such figures do tend to go up and down to some degree," Thurler said. In 2007, there were 32 reported burglaries.
The reporting guidelines have changed several times, according to Thurler.
"This change took effect with 2009 reports. Immediately prior to that, the federal policy was the reverse: Colleges and universities were to assume that a theft was a burglary unless they had evidence to the contrary," she said.
"[T]hat policy was itself a change of an even earlier policy that assumed thefts were larcenies, not burglaries, unless there was evidence to the contrary," Thurler said. "Tufts has always adhered to the definitions as required by the law."
Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security On Campus, Inc., a non−profit organization that advocates crime reporting standards among college campuses, said the change brings the university more in line with the criteria the FBI uses for its crime reports.
The new guidelines are part of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act), a 1990 federal statute that requires all institutions receiving federal financial aid funding to disclose their crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education.
In order for theft to be considered burglary, there must be evidence of someone other than residents or invited guests taking an object, Carter told the Daily.
"If a student had left their residence hall room unlocked, and the roommate had some people over, and they came back in a couple of hours, and they notice their iPod is missing, and the campus police investigate, but they never find out who took it ... under the old definition, they would report this as burglary," Carter said.
Under the new reporting guidelines, however, this type of incident would only be reported if it were classified as a hate crime or at the discretion of the campus police unit, according to Carter.
"It's simply missing and is never recovered, but if you don't know who has stolen the item, the new application is you assume theft, whereas before you assume burglary," he said.
Katie Hyder, whose television was reported stolen from her Metcalf Hall dorm room in 2008, filed a report with the police and spoke with the Office of Residential Life and Learning, but her television was never recovered, she said.
Hyder, now a senior, said there were two students living in her room over the winter recess, but neither could account for why the room was left unlocked or how the TV was stolen.
Under the new guidelines, Hyder's case would not appear in crime statistics as a burglary and would not be required to be reported to the Department of Education, the source of information used by The Daily Beast in its recent safety ranking that named Tufts the most dangerous school in the country.
"When deciding how to categorize an incident, there is obviously room for individual institutional judgment and interpretation. This can contribute to variations in data reporting. It is difficult to make accurate comparisons between institutions or accurately rank institutions," Thurler said.
The reporting change has yet to be taken into account by every school, and although Security On Campus has made The Daily Beast aware of the changes for future rankings, the latest report came out after most institutions had published their newer statistics, according to Carter.
"I think we're disappointed any time that the Clery Act is made less inclusive, but at the same time we recognize that it is consistent with what every city and town in America reports," Carter said.
Hyder agreed with this sentiment.
"I definitely think that if they're going to be making a blanket statement, they really do need to standardize what they are reporting. It would be a lot easier to understand how they ranked it," Hyder said.
Thurler noted that Tufts University Police Department will continue to track and follow up on reports of thefts and include them in public police logs.
"When we see a pattern of incidents, we may alert the community so that they can be extra vigilant," she said.
