A slug of new data has recently been released covering campus statistics on violence against women. This data was mandated by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA) and is added to numerous other statistics required under the Campus Crime Statistics Act, or Clery Act. College institutions must now compile statistics for incidents of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and to include certain policies, procedures, and programs pertaining to these incidents in their annual security reports.
Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, psychological violence, and emotional abuse. Dating violence is violence committed by a person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the victim is dating violence. Stalking is a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.
A total of 2,029 colleges reported 12,171 total offenses under these specific definitions including 3,992 acts of domestic violence, 3,570 acts of dating violence, and 4,609 acts of stalking. The data must be further reported by the location of the offense. When marrying the total offenses under the VAWA to the female enrollment, we find that an average of 140.6 offenses occurred per 100,000 female students. You can view any of the campus safety data by institution for free in Public Insight.
