What's Happening on Campus- Part 2: Why Reporting Is So Hard

College Safety
Written by Larry Betz

And the Federal Law That Forces Schools to Tell You Anyway

By Larry Betz | Prepared Not Paranoid https://www.preparednotparanoid.com/

Updated October 31, 2026

Campus crime statistics only count what gets reported, and most of what happens never is. Before you trust any school's numbers, you need to understand why reporting is so hard, and how to read those numbers for yourself.

Why This Part Exists

Part 1 covered what's alleged in the Cornell case. Before we go any further into the patterns behind it, I want to stop on something a lot of people skip past: almost none of this works unless someone actually reports it, and reporting is one of the hardest things we ask an 18 or 19 year old to do.

Think about what that actually requires. A young woman has just lived through the worst night of her life. She's disoriented, she may not remember all of it clearly because of alcohol or a drug she didn't consent to, and the people she'd normally trust, a friend, a fraternity, sometimes even the school itself, are part of what just happened to her. To report it, she has to say it out loud, in detail, again and again. Every single retelling means reliving it. That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a genuine reason survivors, of any age, choose silence instead.

Here's the part that makes it even harder to think clearly about: she's doing all of that while knowing that even a completely truthful report might not lead anywhere. Prosecutors have to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, and a case built on alcohol, an alleged drug, and no independent witnesses is often the kind of case a district attorney looks at and says there isn't enough evidence to charge, the same outcome we saw in Part 1. Nobody wants to go through the worst night of their life, then relive it publicly, then be told it wasn't enough. That fear alone keeps a lot of survivors from ever filing a report at all.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Why These Cases Are So Hard to Prove

Before we go any further, it's worth taking a step back and explaining something that runs underneath every single case in this series, whether it's a sexual assault allegation, a theft, or a hazing death. The American legal system is built on a principle most people can recite but few have really thought through: innocent until proven guilty. That's not a technicality or a loophole. It's one of the foundational protections in our entire justice system, and it exists for a real reason, to prevent the government from locking someone up based on accusation alone.

Here's what that principle actually means in practice. The burden of proof sits entirely on the prosecution, not the accused. A prosecutor doesn't get to charge someone because it seems likely something happened, or because the accusation is credible, or even because most people involved believe it's true. A prosecutor has to gather enough admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard of proof that exists in our legal system, before a jury of ordinary citizens. The accused doesn't have to prove innocence. The state has to prove guilt, fully, cleanly, and beyond reasonable doubt, or the case doesn't move forward at all.

That standard is genuinely difficult to meet in the best of circumstances, with security footage, physical evidence, and cooperative witnesses. Now think about what it takes to meet that same standard in a case involving alcohol, a house full of people with competing loyalties, and no independent witnesses to the parts of the night that matter most. Memory gets unreliable. Physical evidence degrades by the hour. People who were there have reasons, sometimes protective, sometimes self-interested, not to say everything they saw. A prosecutor looking at that landscape isn't being callous or dismissive when they decline to bring charges. They're often looking honestly at whether they can actually meet a standard the law requires them to meet, and deciding they can't, not because nothing happened, but because proving exactly what happened to that standard is a genuinely different, much harder question.

This is the part that makes this even more brutal for a survivor specifically. Meeting that burden of proof doesn't just mean gathering evidence quietly behind the scenes. It means the person who lived through the worst night of their life has to tell that story, in full, painful detail, over and over again. To a campus police officer first. Then to a Title IX investigator. Then, if it goes further, to a detective, to a grand jury, to a defense attorney doing everything legally permitted to find inconsistencies in the account, and potentially to an entire courtroom. Every single one of those retellings means reliving it. Not remembering it in passing, but reconstructing it in specific, often humiliating detail, again and again, to a system that still might conclude there isn't enough to move forward. That's not a flaw in the process. It's what due process actually costs the person on the other side of the accusation, and it's one of the most honest reasons survivors choose not to report in the first place. Not because they're not telling the truth. Because they understand, correctly, exactly how hard the road in front of them would be even if every word they said was accurate.

I want to be clear about why I'm including this. This isn't a defense of anyone specifically accused in this series, and it isn't a suggestion that survivors shouldn't come forward. It's an honest explanation of why "no charges were filed" and "nothing happened" are not the same sentence, and why a prosecutor's decision not to charge is so often more complicated, and more human, than it looks from the outside.

The Numbers Only Count What Gets Reported, and That's the Problem

Here's something every family needs to understand before they ever look at a college's official crime statistics: those numbers only reflect what was reported. They say nothing about what actually happened.

Cornell's own data proves this better than I could explain it. In its 2025 Annual Security Report, Cornell disclosed 23 reported on-campus rapes in 2024, 28 in 2023, and 25 in 2022, along with 21, 22, and 24 reported fondling incidents in those same years. Those are the official, federally required numbers. Cornell's newest report, released in September 2026, adds the 2025 numbers: 6 reported on-campus rapes and 7 reported fondling incidents.

Now compare that to Cornell's own 2023 Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct, which went to 6,000 randomly selected students and asked them directly about their experiences rather than waiting for an official report. That survey found 23 percent of undergraduate women and 9 percent of undergraduate men said they had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact during their time at Cornell. The same survey found only 38 percent of students knew how to actually file an official complaint.

Here's what those percentages actually look like in real students, not just numbers on a page. In 2023, Cornell had about 16,070 undergraduates, roughly 8,760 women and 7,310 men. Twenty-three percent of that female undergraduate population works out to about 2,015 women. Nine percent of the male undergraduate population works out to about 660 men. Add those together and you're looking at roughly 2,675 Cornell undergraduates who told the university's own survey they had experienced some form of nonconsensual sexual contact at some point during their time on campus.

Then came the 2025 survey. It found 35 percent of undergraduate women reported nonconsensual sexual contact during their time at Cornell, up from 23 percent. That would be about 3,000 women. To be fair, far fewer students answered the 2025 survey (about 15 percent of those invited, down from 36 percent in 2023), so that number should be read with care. But even the lower, more reliable 2023 figure tells the same story.

Here's how those numbers sit side by side.

Now put that next to the official count. Twenty-three reported rapes in 2024. Twenty-one reported fondling incidents. Six and seven in 2025. To be fair, these figures aren't measuring the exact same thing. The survey asks about a student's entire time at Cornell, however many years that covers, while the Annual Security Report counts one calendar year. The survey's "nonconsensual sexual contact" is also a broader category than the legal definitions of rape and fondling, and the official count only covers certain campus locations. But even giving the university the full benefit of every one of those differences, thousands of students self-reporting an experience against a yearly official count in the single digits to the twenties isn't a rounding error. That's not because assault is rare and the survey is exaggerating. It's because most of what happens never gets reported, and a huge chunk of students don't even know how the reporting process works if they wanted to use it.


One more thing about that 2025 drop. Going from 23 reported rapes to 6 in one year might look like good news. It might be. But a drop in reports can mean fewer assaults, or it can mean fewer people coming forward, and the official report can't tell you which. The same year, Cornell's own survey showed experiences going up, not down. That's exactly why you never read one of these numbers by itself.

When Schools Get the Reporting Wrong on Purpose

It gets worse than students simply staying silent. There's a well-documented history of universities failing to report, or actively downplaying, crimes that were reported to them, because bad numbers are bad publicity.

Penn State is the clearest example. The Department of Education found that a 2001 report of Jerry Sandusky with a boy in a team shower was never recorded in the university's crime statistics, and no timely warning was ever issued. By 2008, a high school where Sandusky volunteered was investigating him, and in 2010 Juniata College turned him down as a volunteer coach after a background check turned up that investigation. The Department found Penn State never warned its campus as charges against him approached. In the end, the Department of Education identified 11 separate Clery Act violations and fined Penn State nearly $2.4 million, more than $2.1 million of that specifically for failing to properly classify and disclose campus crimes. Between 2008 and 2011 alone, the university failed to disclose 230 crimes, including four forcible sexual assaults, seven aggravated assaults, and seven burglaries

Michigan State is the second major example. In 2019 the Department of Education fined the university $4.5 million, the largest Clery Act fine at the time, after finding it failed to properly respond to complaints about Larry Nassar, whose abuse reportedly dated back to the 1990s. The Department described Michigan State's failures as systemic, not a single missed report, an actual pattern across the institution.

Liberty University now holds the record. In 2024, Liberty agreed to pay $14 million, by far the largest Clery Act fine ever, after the Department of Education found "serious, persistent, and systemic violations" from 2016 to 2023, including discouraging students from reporting.

I want to be precise about what this means for you as a parent. It doesn't mean every school is hiding something. It means the official number a school publishes can be shaped by how motivated that school is to look safe on paper. In each of these cases, a major university chose underreporting over transparency, until the federal government caught them and fined them for it.

What the Jeanne Clery Act Actually Requires, Crime by Crime

The Jeanne Clery Act exists specifically to take that choice away from schools. It requires every college and university that receives federal funding, which is nearly all of them, to publicly report specific categories of crime every single year, whether the number makes them look good or not. Here's exactly what has to be disclosed, and what each category actually means in practice.

Murder and non-negligent manslaughter. This is the willful killing of one person by another. In a Clery report, this would cover something like a student killed in an on-campus altercation or a targeted attack in a dorm.

Manslaughter by negligence. This is a killing caused by gross negligence rather than intent, for example a death caused by a fraternity hazing ritual gone fatally wrong, which is exactly the kind of incident that connects this category directly to the hazing reforms we'll cover further in this series.

Rape. Defined as penetration, of any degree, of the vagina or anus by any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ, without the victim's consent. This is the category the Cornell case would fall under, and it's the category where Cornell reported 23 on-campus incidents in 2024 and 6 in 2025.

Fondling. The touching of another person's private body parts for sexual gratification without consent, including situations where the victim cannot legally consent due to age or incapacitation. This is a separate, distinct category from rape, and Cornell reported 21 on-campus incidents in 2024 and 7 in 2025.

Incest. Sexual intercourse between people related closely enough that marriage between them would be illegal. This category exists in every Clery report but is rarely reported on college campuses specifically, since it typically involves family relationships rather than student-to-student conduct.

Statutory rape. Sexual intercourse with someone under the legal age of consent, regardless of whether the encounter was otherwise consensual in the moment. This matters on college campuses because of dual-enrollment students and campus visitors who may be under 18.

Robbery. Taking property from a person by force, threat, or by putting them in fear, for example a student mugged for a phone or laptop walking back from a library at night.

Aggravated assault. An attack intended to cause severe bodily injury, typically involving a weapon or a method capable of causing serious harm, distinct from a simple physical altercation.

Burglary. Unlawfully entering a building with intent to commit a felony or theft inside, for example someone breaking into a dorm room to steal property while no one is present.

Motor vehicle theft. Taking or attempting to take a vehicle without authorization, a common campus statistic tied to parking structures and student lots.

Arson. Willfully or maliciously setting a fire, or attempting to, whether targeting a dwelling, a vehicle, or other property, including incidents tied to fraternity houses specifically.

Hate crimes. Any of the above offenses, plus larceny-theft, simple assault, intimidation, and vandalism, but only when the offense was motivated by bias against the victim's race, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, or disability. A dorm room defaced with a slur, for example, gets tracked here even though vandalism alone isn't otherwise a Clery-reportable category.

Dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking, added under the Violence Against Women Act. Dating violence covers violence by someone in a romantic or intimate relationship with the victim. Domestic violence covers spouses, co-parents, or cohabitants. Stalking covers a pattern of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or suffer real emotional distress, for example someone repeatedly showing up uninvited outside a student's dorm or apartment after being told to stop.

Weapons, drug, and liquor law violations, reported as arrests and separately as disciplinary referrals, meaning a school handled it internally rather than involving police. This distinction matters, because a high disciplinary-referral number and a low arrest number can indicate a school prefers handling serious issues quietly through its own process rather than through law enforcement.

Hazing, the newest addition to the law. Under the Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed in December 2024, schools began collecting hazing data on January 1, 2025, and the Annual Security Reports released in October 2026 are the first to include it. Schools must also publish a standalone Campus Hazing Transparency Report naming any student organization found responsible for a hazing violation, what happened, what the investigation found, and what discipline resulted. Those reports were first due December 23, 2025, and must be updated at least twice a year. This is the single newest, most directly useful tool for evaluating a specific fraternity or sorority's actual track record. Cornell, for example, now posts its report on its hazing website.

Where to Actually Pull This Data Yourself

Every school is required to publish its Annual Security Report by October 1 each year, covering the previous three years of data, on its own website, usually through its campus police or public safety office. Search "school name annual security report" and it will come up directly.

For a faster way to compare schools against each other, the Department of Education runs a free public tool, the Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool, at ope.ed.gov/campussafety. You can look up any specific school and pull its reported numbers, by category, across multiple years, using the same standardized federal data for every institution in the country. If you're choosing between two or three schools for your daughter or son, this is where you go before you ever set foot on either campus.

Then go one step further and look for the school's own climate survey. New York requires its colleges to run one at least every two years, and many schools in other states run them too. That's where you find what students say, not just what got reported.

Here's the whole checklist in one place.


The Prepared Protector Reads the Fine Print

The admissions brochure shows the quad in October and students laughing on the library steps. The Prepared Protector reads the brochure too, then pulls the security report, finds the climate survey, checks the hazing report, and asks the tour guide who investigates a sexual assault report on this campus. It takes an evening. It might be the most important research you do for that school.

What to Do With This Information if Something Already Happened

Everything above is about researching before you send your child to a school. But if you're a parent reading this because something has already happened, or your student is trying to decide whether to report something, there are two resources worth knowing about right now.

RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, runs the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (800-656-4673), available 24 hours a day by phone or online chat at rainn.org. RAINN's website also has resources for college students and their families, built around exactly the conversation this whole series is trying to help you have.

Project Callisto exists specifically to solve the problem this entire section has been about: the fear of not being believed, and the fear of reliving the worst night of your life for a system that might not do anything with it anyway. Callisto is an encrypted, third-party platform, separate from the university and separate from police, where a student can create a private, timestamped record of what happened without being forced to immediately decide whether to file a formal report. Its core feature is a matching system: if a second student later enters the same perpetrator, Callisto flags the match, and each survivor is connected with a Callisto Legal Options Counselor who walks them through their options. That means a survivor can find out they weren't the only one before they ever have to make a public accusation, which is often the exact piece of information that gives someone the confidence to finally come forward. It's free for anyone 18 or older with a college .edu email address.

What to Say

Before move-in

  • "Before you pick a school, let's look at its safety report together. Not to scare you. Just so we both know what we're looking at."

  • "If anything ever happens, you don't have to decide right away whether to report it. Call me first. We'll figure out the next step together."

If your student tells you something happened

  • "I believe you. I'm so sorry. This is not your fault."

  • "You're in charge of what happens next. I'm here to help, not to push."

On the college tour

  • "Who investigates a sexual assault report here: campus police, local police, or state police?"

  • "Where can I find your most recent climate survey results?"

5 Quick Wins You Can Start Today

  1. Pull the Annual Security Report for your student's school, or the schools on your list.

  2. Look up each school on ope.ed.gov/campussafety and compare them side by side.

  3. Find each school's climate survey and its Campus Hazing Transparency Report.

  4. Save the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-4673) in your student's phone, and in yours.

  5. Tell your student about Callisto and the confidential resources on their campus.

Ask Yourself

  • Have I ever actually read my student's school's security report, or just the brochure?

  • Does my student know how to report, and who they'd be reporting to?

  • If my student were assaulted, would they call me before deciding what to do?

Remember

A school's official numbers tell you what was reported, not what happened. "No charges were filed" and "nothing happened" are not the same sentence, and neither are "few reports" and "safe campus." Read the numbers, find the survey, and make sure your student knows they can call you first.

The Bottom Line

You cannot control whether a school's official numbers reflect what's actually happening on that campus. What you can control is whether you know how to read those numbers honestly, where to find them yourself instead of trusting a glossy admissions brochure, and what a family should do if the worst night of someone's life ever actually happens. That's not paranoia. That's what it means to be a Prepared Protector.

Get Started Today

Get the free College Safety Conversation Guide. It includes the two conversations this post is built around, "Reporting, Silence, and Trust" and "Documentation and Reporting Options," with the actual words to start each one, plus the rest of the conversations every family should have before move-in day. DM the word [KEYWORD] on Instagram or Facebook and I'll send it to you. [Get it here: LINK]

Go Deeper

Navigating the Red Zone and Beyond. This post shows you why the numbers miss most of what happens. The book shows your family how to lower the risk in the first place: what the Red Zone is, how manipulators lower a student's guard, boundary scripts, drink and party safety, situational awareness with SCAN, rideshare and housing safety, how to support a friend, and what to do if the worst happens. [Get it here: https://link.amazon/B030JRBPp]


Tools I recommend: The dorm safety gear I recommend for your student's first year is in my College Dorm Room Essentials Amazon store. https://link.amazon/B061T3Evk


Related reading:

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 1: The Cornell Case [LINK]

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 4: Who Investigates These Cases [LINK]

  • What's Happening on Campus, Part 8: Hazing [LINK]

  • College Safety Resource Center [LINK]

References

Disclaimer

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and is meant to start conversations in your family. It is not legal advice and not a substitute for professional counseling, medical care, or legal counsel. Crime statistics and survey results are reported by the schools and agencies cited and may be updated after this post. Laws on sexual assault, consent, and reporting vary by state, so check your state and county for the exact laws where your student lives and goes to school. If you suspect abuse or assault, contact a professional or law enforcement immediately. Prepared Not Paranoid and Larry Betz are not affiliated with RAINN or Callisto and are not responsible for the content of third-party websites or resources linked here. Affiliate disclosure: I've linked to products from my Amazon store that I personally recommend. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work.

If you or someone you love is in danger, call 911. For confidential support after a sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 (800-656-HOPE), any time, day or night.


Awareness gives you time. Time gives you options.


The Prepared Protector is someone who's decided that loving someone means being ready for them, not just hoping things go fine.


Prepared Not Paranoid. Protecting the Most Vulnerable Among Us.

Larry Betz https://www.sedonastrengthandmobility.com
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What's Happening on Campus- Part 1: The Cornell Case
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What's Happening on Campus- Part 3: It's One Big Club