The Judicial Office director believes NIU’s high ranking in reported rapes last year stems from differences in university policies about reporting crimes on campus.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported a state high of 11 rapes at NIU in the last academic year. NIU was one of the highest ranked in reported rapes in the nation, according to the report.

A federal law enacted last year requires all universities to report crimes occurring on their campuses. This is the first time a conclusive report could be completed under the regulation.

“NIU considers a larger part of the community when coming up with crime statistics than other universities when they report crime activities on their campuses,” said Judicial Office Director Larry Bolles.

Bolles said NIU not only considers the residence halls in crime statistics, but Greek Row and off-campus housing as well. “If a crime is committed against a student of NIU, we report it in the statistics no matter where it happened in DeKalb,” he said.

“There are some universities that don’t report rapes that happen across the street in student housing because they don’t consider it part of the campus and, therefore, they don’t have to include it in the statistics submitted to the public,” Bolles said.

He said NIU has a whole system of finding out about rapes that occur on campus. NIU Counseling and Development, the University Police and Health Enhancement Services all help to bring rapes to the attention of the Judicial Office. Anything the office knows about is reported within the statistics.

“Knowing the actual number of rapes is safer than hiding them from the NIU community. NIU is not a campus that waits for the crimes to come to them, we are out there looking for the victims and the offenders,” Bolles said.