Rape reporting up at UNH

There were 40 reported rapes at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham in 2015, compared to 24 rapes in 2014.

This increase may be due to more reporting rather than an increase in sexual violence, however.

UNH police Chief Paul Dean and Amy Culp, Director of the Sexual Harassment & Rape Prevention Program (SHARPP), both told the Concord Monitor that reporting is up at UNH after programs to increase awareness of sexual assault. 

The UNH data comes from the annual Clery Report on crime that all colleges must file with the federal government. While the data is intended to help students evaluate campus safety, the number of rapes reported by colleges often do not match the number of rapes students report in anonymous surveys. For example, 91% of colleges reported zero rapes in 2014, which is highly unlikely. 

So does the University of New Hampshire have a sexual assault problem? According to SHARPP, only 9 out of 53 sexual assault victims who approached SHARPP ultimately reported the crime to police during the 2014-2015 school year.  If that pattern held true during the 2015-2016 school year, there could have been hundreds of sexual assaults on the UNH campus. Whether that number is better or worse than other colleges, it is certainly too high in the eyes of victims.

Do you have a reaction to the sexual assault statistics from UNH? Let us know in the comments.