UCLA disputes ranking as most dangerous college
By Erin Donnelly
Nov. 26, 2012 1:02 a.m.
UCLA officials are disputing an article published by a business news website last week that listed UCLA as the most dangerous university in the country.
The website, Business Insider, compiled its listings based on an FBI compilation of crime statistics in universities and colleges, according to the article entitled “The 25 Most Dangerous Colleges In America.”
The site looked at colleges and universities with more than 10,000 students. For each school, the site averaged the per capita crime data from 2008 to 2011.
A final list of the 25 schools the site deemed the most dangerous included three University of California schools, one of which was UCLA.
UCLA officials released a statement Wednesday objecting to the site’s analysis of the FBI’s statistics.
According to the statement, the Business Insider article included all crimes reported to university police, including off-campus reports, reports outside of the Westwood area and crimes from UCLA’s hospital systems, which are spread all over Los Angeles County.
The added figures mistakenly inflated UCLA’s crime statistics by including crimes that might not be connected to the UCLA campus, according to the statement.
The site placed four times more emphasis on violent crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, than on property crimes, such as burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson, when compiling the rankings, according to the article.
In the FBI data from 2011, there were 40 violent crimes reported for UCLA, and more than 800 property crimes. Among the violent crimes, 12 forcible rapes, 11 robberies and 17 aggravated assaults were reported.
Officials from UC Riverside, which was ranked the 24th most dangerous university, also released a statement criticizing what they called the article’s “intentionally inflammatory headline.”
Both UC Riverside and UCLA pointed to the Clery Act reports, crime statistics for universities released annually by university police, as a more accurate source of crime data.
