The University of Michigan’s Division of Public Safety and Security released its 2021 Security and Fire Safety Report Monday. The annual report, which is required by the Jeanne Clery Act, lists statistics for several types of crime on campus.
The most recent report covered the 2020 calendar year. Crimes are entered into DPSS’s Clery logs based on the date the crime was reported, regardless of when it occurred. Reports of crimes perpetrated by former University doctor Robert Anderson — which spanned the decades he spent at the University — were not reported until 2020, making the number of reports from this past year much higher than in years prior.
Of the 1,212 rapes reported in 2020, 1,194 were part of the Anderson investigation. There were 947 cases of fondling, of which 916 came from the investigations.
“It is important to note that the University also received reports about Anderson that included conduct that did not meet the definition of a Clery Act crime,” the report reads. “Because those allegations did not reflect crimes meeting Clery Act definitions, they are not included in the University’s statistics.”
As part of the report’s addendum, DPSS clarified how it classified Anderson cases, especially cases where the details are unclear due to the nature of the reports. In general, when there was a question of whether or not a case took place within the University’s Clery area — which refers to the University property and its immediate surroundings — DPSS said they erred on the side of including that case in the report.
Survivors of Anderson protested at the most recent Board of Regents meeting, calling on the University to better protect victims of sexual misconduct. Hundreds of survivors had previously filed a class action lawsuit against the University, saying the University knew of misconduct but failed to take action on these claims.
DPSS also said they leaned toward including all cases when an individual gave a vague number of instances. When individuals reported a range of occurrences, officials took the higher end of the estimate. DPSS also said they did their best to correlate descriptions of cases to a specific number. For example, a “couple” of incidents was counted as two and a “few” were counted as three.
Beyond the Anderson-related claims, the University saw a decrease in liquor and drug law violations during 2020, while other crimes remained largely stable. Four fires occurred in 2020 — all were unintentional.
Daily Staff Reporter Dominic Coletti can be reached at dcoletti@umich.edu.