US universities alarmed by attacks

While New York City is on track for another year with a lower overall crime rate, the recent murder of a college student in Manhattan has unnerved a campus amid an upward trend in crime on US campuses after years of declines.

"Our sense of safety in our community and our city has been brutally shaken," wrote Sian Leah Beilock, president of Barnard College, in a message to students on Dec 13.

Two days before, Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old Barnard freshman from Virginia, was fatally stabbed in a nearby park.

"A tragedy has happened in a park where so many of us have spent time," she said, referring to Morningside Park. It is about a kilometer from the school and is considered an "off-campus" location.

The park is between a Barnard dormitory and Columbia University, with which Barnard is affiliated.

In the first three quarters of 2019, there were 11 robberies in the park, among the most in New York City parks in the year, according to data from the New York Police Department, or NYPD.

In the year ending Dec 8, reports of violent crime and sex crimes surged 82 percent in the park and on its perimeter, according to the NYPD.

In August, a Chinese student at Columbia University－who had been in the US for only four days－reported that he was robbed in the same park by three youths.

Two Columbia University public safety booths are at the western edge of Morningside Park. The school said a guard was posted when Majors was attacked and responded "immediately upon recognizing that she was hurt".

In the aftermath of the attack, the schools increased safety measures by extending staffing hours of the two booths to 24 hours and adding a foot patrol between the booths, according to Amy Zavadil, interim executive director of public safety at Barnard.

The NYPD assigned two marked vehicles to the park, with requests made to the city for additional camera support and lighting, she added.

The police have identified three suspects in the case of Majors, a talented musician from Virginia, known for her outgoing personality.

One suspect is 13 years old and other two are 14. The 13-year-old has been charged with second-degree felony murder.

It was not the only fatal incident recently on or near a US college campus. On Nov 26, a 19-year-old student from the University of Illinois at Chicago was sexually assaulted and murdered in a campus parking garage.

The university started instituting 24-hour security patrols in campus parking garages, and school officials were considering making the extended patrol hours permanent in the coming semester, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Last year in Illinois, a man convicted in the June 2017 killing of a Chinese scholar was sentenced to life in prison. Brendt Christensen avoided the death penalty when he was sentenced in a US federal court in July in relation to the kidnapping and murder of Zhang Yingying, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

'No campus is immune'

In January 2016, a Chinese exchange student at Arizona State University was killed in a road rage incident in Tempe, Arizona. Yue Jiang, 19, died after she was shot and her car subsequently crashed, police said. Her killer was sentenced in June 2018 to 25 years in prison.

"No campus is immune from crime," said Abigail Boyer, associate executive director for the Clery Center, a nonprofit organization that helps schools to comply with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, or Clery Act for short.

Regardless of the locations of schools－urban, suburban or rural areas, US universities and colleges all face safety challenges. How they perform in keeping campuses safe relates to the systems they have in place to "both prevent and respond to incidents when they do occur", said Boyer.

The Clery Act, a federal statute passed in 1990, requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funds to publish an annual report that discloses the school's campus crime and fire safety statistics and provides policy statements.

Data from the US Department of Education showed the number of reported criminal offenses had been decreasing in the decade after 2005 but has since risen slightly. The latest data from 2017 gathered reports from more than 6,300 institutions.

Boyer said the rise in crime might not necessarily mean that campuses are becoming less safe.

The data can "actually go up" with campuses putting a lot of effort into their response policies, procedures and programs, thus making students more willing to report, she said.

The University of Southern California, for example, reported a drastic increase in the number of sex offenses in 2018－from 34 to 118－as longtime gynecologist George Tyndall was accused of sexually abusing hundreds of students in his almost three-decade tenure.

The university, near downtown Los Angeles, was known among Chinese for two deadly crimes targeting Chinese students. In 2012, a Chinese couple, both graduate students, were shot to death in their car during an attempted robbery. Two years later, four teenagers robbed and killed another Chinese student.

"A lot of times, what campuses are focusing on now is how to re-create systems for reporting. So people are comfortable coming forward, for they are confident in the response that they are going to receive from their institution," said Boyer.

Seeking more secure environments, schools are investing more in security equipment and services. IHS Markit reported that in 2017, sales of security equipment and services to the education sector reached $2.7 billion, an 8 percent increase from two years ago.

A lack of video monitors and electronic door locks soaked up time and resources at Central Washington University in February after false reports of gunshots. In the past week, the school requested $3.28 million in state funding to upgrade its security systems, The Associated Press reported.

As the challenges that schools face change over time, the Clery Act has been updated accordingly.

An emergency notification requirement was added to the law in 2008, asking schools to alert the campus community of immediate or ongoing threats, in light of the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007－the deadliest school shooting in US history.

In 2013, the law was amended to address dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

"While a lot of people associate the Clery Act with statistics, some of the most important work of the Clery Act is in the policies that institutions must create as a response to those requirements," said Boyer.