New Haven, Conn.-A campus safety watchdog organization, Security On Campus, Inc., is calling for a federal investigation into Yale University's crime reporting practices following charges raised in the current issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine that the school has been underreporting campus rapes. According to the article, "Lux, Veritas, and Sexual Trespass" written by Emily Bazelon, Yale University hasn't collected sexual assault and other crime statistics from school officials other than police, a practice that violates the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.

"Keeping the truth about campus violence hidden puts student lives at risk needlessly," said Connie Clery, who co-founded the watchdog organization with her husband Howard after their daughter Jeanne was brutally raped and murdered on campus at Lehigh University in 1986. "The federal law named in memory of our daughter is designed to keep students safe, and to make sure that image-conscious schools can't keep crime secret by handling it internally rather than by referring it to the police. Failing to report honestly is unacceptable, and we're demanding that Yale immediately correct their crime statistics."

Yale claims that "the total number of crimes occurring on and around Yale's campus was below the Ivy League average," but the Yale Alumni Magazine article quotes several campus officials saying that they have never submitted crime statistics as the Clery Act requires. Yale, with eleven thousand students, reported only 5 sex offenses between 2000 and 2002, while Dartmouth with only half as many students reported 10, and Duke with twelve thousand students reported 28 according to the article.

The complaint filed by Clery's organization with the U.S. Department of Education last week is calling for a full scale investigation of Yale's crime reporting, and for the immediate correction of the school's most current statistics due to be given to students arriving on campus this fall. Schools that violate the Jeanne Clery Act risk fines up to $27,500 for each unreported statistic, and loss of their eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs.