The suspect in the June 9 shooting at Auburn University has turned himself in, but aftershocks of the horrific crime will undoubtedly shake the campus for weeks, if not months, to come. Unfortunately, Auburn is hardly the only university in the country that has to deal with crime on campus.
To find America’s 25 Most Crime-Rattled Colleges, The Daily Beast scoured the college crime data made available through the U.S. Department of Education. Universities are required to track and submit publicly available crime statistics thanks to the Jeanne Clery Act. The data represent reported crimes, not prosecutions.
We looked at four-year nonprofit private colleges and four-year public colleges with more than 6,000 total students, taking into account the numbers for each school’s primary campus and auxiliary campuses in the same metro area as the main campus. Our final dataset included more than 500 universities. The crimes we considered were: murder, negligent murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, car theft, and arson. Because not all crimes are the same, we devised a subjective weighting system based on crime severity. Burglary established our low-end baseline for weighting; car theft was weighted twice as much as burglary; assault and robbery, six times as much as burglary; arson and negligent manslaughter, 10 times as much as burglary; and murder, 20 times as much as burglary.
In addition to weighting, we considered each crime against total enrollment, to come up with a per-capita ratio. Finally, each per-capita ratio was compared to the overall cohort of more than 500 schools—to take into account whether each school’s per-capita ratio for each crime was relatively high or low—to determine our final list of America’s Most Crime-Rattled Colleges.
Getty Images (3); AP Photo
Cambridge, Mass.
Total Enrollment: 27,594
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 92
Aggravated Assaults: 87
Burglaries: 357
Car Thefts: 93
Arson: 0
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Jonesboro, Ark.
Total Enrollment: 13,415
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 2
Aggravated Assaults: 6
Burglaries: 126
Car Thefts: 8
Arson: 0
Zereshk / Wikimedia Commons
Grand Forks, N.D.
Total Enrollment: 14,194
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 1
Robberies: 0
Aggravated Assaults: 10
Burglaries: 51
Car Thefts: 6
Arson: 2
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Binghamton, N.Y.
Total Enrollment: 14,895
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 1
Aggravated Assaults: 5
Burglaries: 88
Car Thefts: 1
Arson: 8
Binghamton University
Durham, N.C.
Total Enrollment: 15,016
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 12
Aggravated Assaults: 23
Burglaries: 132
Car Thefts: 36
Arson: 5
Streeter Lecka / Getty Images
Chicago, Ill.
Total Enrollment: 11,746
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 10
Aggravated Assaults: 6
Burglaries: 0
Car Thefts: 14
Arson: 0
Slo-mo / Wikimedia Commons
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Total Enrollment: 22,218
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 1
Robberies: 23
Aggravated Assaults: 119
Burglaries: 159
Car Thefts: 12
Arson: 6
Carl Jantzen / Wikimedia Commons
Dartmouth, Mass.
Total Enrollment: 9,432
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 5
Aggravated Assaults: 44
Burglaries: 130
Car Thefts: 9
Arson: 25
Tyler Ruffin / Wikimedia Commons
Orono, Maine
Total Enrollment: 11,501
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 4
Aggravated Assaults: 5
Burglaries: 73
Car Thefts: 4
Arson: 46
Robert F. Bukaty / AP Photo
St. Louis, Mo.
Total Enrollment: 13,820
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 37
Aggravated Assaults: 34
Burglaries: 131
Car Thefts: 104
Arson: 0
Jeff Roberson / AP Photo
Medford, Mass.
Total Enrollment: 10,480
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 19
Aggravated Assaults: 9
Burglaries: 137
Car Thefts: 11
Arson: 0
Chitose Suzuki / AP Photo
New Haven, Conn.
Total Enrollment: 11,701
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 38
Aggravated Assaults: 4
Burglaries: 164
Car Thefts: 37
Arson: 2
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Philadelphia, Pa.
Total Enrollment: 25,007
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 2
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 106
Aggravated Assaults: 44
Burglaries: 80
Car Thefts: 25
Arson: 2
Mark Stehle / AP Photo
Starkville, Miss.
Total Enrollment: 19,644
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 2
Robberies: 7
Aggravated Assaults: 12
Burglaries: 93
Car Thefts: 16
Arson: 1
Kenneth Billings, MSU / AP Photo
Menomonie, Wis.
Total Enrollment: 9,339
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 0
Negligent Homicides: 1
Robberies: 1
Aggravated Assaults: 17
Burglaries: 59
Car Thefts: 5
Arson: 0
Bobak Ha'Eri
Bakersfield, Calif.
Total Enrollment: 7,906
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 0
Aggravated Assaults: 2
Burglaries: 61
Car Thefts: 9
Arson: 0
Eixo / Wikimedia Commons
Louisville, Ky.
Total Enrollment: 21,234
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 2
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 47
Aggravated Assaults: 53
Burglaries: 124
Car Thefts: 62
Arson: 6
AP Photo
Storrs, Conn.
Total Enrollment: 25,498
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 3
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 8
Aggravated Assaults: 13
Burglaries: 91
Car Thefts: 6
Arson: 11
copepodo / Flickr
Nashville, Tenn.
Total Enrollment: 8,930
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 17
Aggravated Assaults: 20
Burglaries: 25
Car Thefts: 15
Arson: 0
AP Photo
Baltimore, Md.
Total Enrollment: 7,805
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 1
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 39
Aggravated Assaults: 13
Burglaries: 95
Car Thefts: 15
Arson: 0
The campus of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Ark., the site of a fatal Sunday shooting, is shown Monday, Oct. 27, 2008. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)Conway, Ark.
Total Enrollment: 11,444
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 2
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 1
Aggravated Assaults: 6
Burglaries: 107
Car Thefts: 12
Arson: 0
Danny Johnston / AP Photo
DeKalb, Ill.
Total Enrollment: 23,850
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 5
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 10
Aggravated Assaults: 24
Burglaries: 68
Car Thefts: 8
Arson: 2
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo
San Francisco, Calif.
Total Enrollment: 9,557
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 2
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 13
Aggravated Assaults: 8
Burglaries: 40
Car Thefts: 17
Arson: 3
Erin Chan / Flickr
Providence, R.I.
Total Enrollment: 10,974
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 3
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 29
Aggravated Assaults: 44
Burglaries: 15
Car Thefts: 29
Arson: 4
Getty Images
Huntsville, Ala.
Total Enrollment: 7,614
Criminal Incidents (2008-2010)
Murders: 3
Negligent Homicides: 0
Robberies: 4
Aggravated Assaults: 10
Burglaries: 80
Car Thefts: 8
Arson: 0
Dave Dieter, Huntsville Times / Landov
