Although there were fewer assaults, burglaries and forcible sex offenses at Ohio University in 2011, students drank and got high more than in years past.
Drug and liquor violations aside, crime on OU’s Athens campus was down across the board in 2011, according to the university’s Clery Act report, which was released Friday.
The OU Police Department releases the report annually to detail crime statistics for the university in the past three years.
According to the report, there were 647 liquor law violations and 189 drug law violations in 2011. These numbers are up from 527 and 126 liquor and drug violations, respectively, in 2010.
The upward trend in these violations continues from 2010, which had higher drug violations than 2009.
“I am not naive enough to think that there isn’t drug activity on campus,” University Police Chief Andrew Powers said in a previous Post article. “I’m certainly aware that students do drugs.”
But drug activity on campus doesn’t always lead to an arrest, because according to the Clery Report, 145 drug law arrests and 232 liquor law arrests were made in 2011.
There were 29 burglaries in 2011, down from 34 in 2010, but robbery remained consistent with only one reported in both 2010 and 2011.
In the past, crime on OU’s main campus has been relatively comparable to campuses in the state with similar enrollment sizes, such as Kent State University and the University of Toledo.
In 2010, Kent State had 30 reported burglaries compared to 34 at OU, according to documents from the U.S. Department of Education. The University of Toledo had 69 reported burglaries.
In that same year, OU had 12 reported forcible sex offenses, compared to two at Kent State and eight at the University of Toledo.
Powers could not be reached for comment by press time but said in a letter that the release of the Clery report should help OU students and Athens residents better protect themselves.
“The more we all know about our environment and society, the safer we will be,” he said.
Interim Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones and Interim Vice President for Students Affairs Ryan Lombardi could not be reached for comment.
jj360410@ohiou.edu
