How Bad Is Campus Crime in California?

--At Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Robbin Brandley, 23, was murdered on Jan. 18, 1986, while walking to her car in a dimly lit parking lot after ushering at a school concert.

--At San Diego State University, there have been eight rapes and attempted rapes in the last two years, the most on any California State University campus. In 1985, Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity was banned for five years as a result of a rape during a party at the house.

--An 18-year-old freshman asleep in her fifth-floor dormitory room in San Nicholas Hall, University of California at Santa Barbara, was brutally beaten, gagged, blindfolded and raped in February, 1987.

--At UCLA in 1985, a 21-year-old woman student working the night shift at the Guest House, a campus hotel for visiting VIPs, was assaulted by two men who attempted to kill her.

Large Urban Campuses

UC Berkeley, with a student body of about 31,000 and 71 violent crimes, ranked No. 1 in violent crimes in 1986 among 330 campuses nationwide reporting in the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report. (However, reporting is not mandatory and many large urban campuses do not do so). In 1988, the number of violent crimes at Berkeley dropped to 45.

On the University of Southern California campus, there were 3 rapes reported in 1988, 9 robberies, 7 aggravated assaults and no homicides. The figures--1,412 total crimes including 449 burglaries from motor vehicles--reflect a marginal decrease from 1987.

UCLA, with 35,700 students, reported 22 violent crimes in 1988.

At a public hearing on campus security at UCLA in March, 1987, members of the state’s Little Hoover Commission, a bipartisan watchdog panel, said the nine UC campuses are among the most crime-ridden in the nation and must be made safer. Robert T. O’Neill, then the commission’s executive director, said then, “In some people’s minds, the UCs are sanctuaries. That’s just not the case any more.”

Jeannine English, who is now executive director, says the commission made recommendations, including establishment of a security review committee on each UC campus to report directly to the chancellor: “We felt that one of the problems with campus security was that a lot of times it was just being ignored in terms of budgeting and the overall emphasis the administration was placing on security.”

The Cal State system’s 1988 report on crime at the 19 campuses in 1988 showed a 10.9% increase from 1987 in the total number of felonies, but a 34.8% dip in violent crimes--homicide, rape, robbery and assault.

Neither the state universities nor the UC system reported any homicides in 1988, but rapes and attempted rapes increased 20% systemwide at the Cal State campuses from 1987, with 18 reported. Violent crimes on UC campuses included 18 rapes, 9 attempted rapes, 38 robberies and 70 aggravated assaults. Still, violent crime was down overall by 16%, the lowest since 1984.

Most Violent Crimes

In the state university system, San Jose State University reported the most violent crimes, followed by Cal State Northridge and San Diego State. At San Diego, the number of violent crimes has dropped dramatically, largely, says John Carpenter, public safety director, as a result of a concerted, high-visibility effort that included officers on overtime on foot patrol.

The San Diego campus, he points out, is the system’s largest, with 36,000 students, and “the urban area is coming closer and closer to campus. We’re not isolated.”

Carpenter says most college campuses are safer than the cities in which they are located, but cautions that parents can’t simply “drop their children off at the dorms” and think their worries are over.