NYU Uses Magic Accounting to Fudge Dorm Crime Stats

The Washington Square News, NYU's student paper, has a juicy article showing how their university artificially deflates campus crime stats by classifying 87% of its residence hall population as "off campus." The exposé sensationally notes that if you're a student who "gets murdered in Rubin residence hall, you were killed off-campus. You missed the cutoff by three blocks." Because it receives federal funds, NYU is required by law to publish its annual crime statistics, but only three of NYU’s 21 undergraduate dorms are technically classified as on-campus. Looking at NYU's report, you might think the school ranks a modest 61st out of the largest 180 universities for substance abuse violations. But when campus and "non-campus" incidents are compiled together, NYU is #2 in the nation (which sounds more like it). Professor Dennis Jay Kenney tells the News, "It clearly sounds to me that they’re trying to circumvent the reporting requirements." Now NYU officials say they'll change the way they present the stats, but it's unclear if this will affect their recent announcement that it would cut back on security.