In a small, unofficial poll conducted by The Daily Collegian last week, only four out of 35 students asked had bothered to read the e-mail message. "I didn't look at the e-mail; I just deleted it," Kevin Ryan (senior-finance) said. "I thought it was nothing important."

Megan Beshalske (senior-film and video) said she skimmed the message and found it somewhat informative. "I mean, it couldn't hurt," she said, when asked if publicizing statistics is a good idea.

Lisa Rodriguez (freshman-business) said she also remembers getting the e-mail message, but deleted it. "I like to know [what is happening but] . . . it doesn't influence the decisions I make," she said.

Students receive the annual "Policies, Safety and U" security report as part of Penn State's effort to comply with a federal law known as the Clery Act. In previous years, the report was mailed to students' home addresses, but it is now distributed electronically.

This year, a second newsletter was issued to change an incorrect statistic. The tally of on-campus sexual assaults was originally listed as zero, but was corrected to 12. The university said the discrepancy was due to a clerical error.

To understand the intention behind what is fully titled the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, it is important to acknowledge its origins.

The act is named for a 19-year-old Lehigh University student who was raped and killed in her dorm room in 1986.

Clery's parents, upon learning that 38 other violent crimes had gone undisclosed at the university in the three years before their daughter's murder, joined forces with other parents to persuade Congress to enact the law. Their goal was to ensure that university students, their parents and university employees would be made aware of the potential dangers associated with their chosen campuses.

"The intent has always been commendable," said Bruce Kline, assistant director of administrative services with Penn State University Police. "Its application and attempts to be thorough, however, have proved to be complex."

The Clery Act originated as a state law in Pennsylvania.

According to the original act, colleges were required to report crime statistics based on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) standards, Kline said.

This meant colleges were required to report only the incidents that occurred within the university's jurisdiction.

Reporting crime statistics this way was simpler for universities like Penn State, where the campus is clearly differentiated from the city, but more difficult for schools like the University of Pittsburgh, where university buildings are heavily interspersed between those of the city.

In such places, only crimes committed inside university buildings or on the lawns that surround them -- not those committed on the sidewalk or other surrounding public property -- were accounted for in the publicized statistics.

The original act allowed Penn State's reports to completely ignore some areas heavily populated by students. About two-thirds of students live in downtown State College, but because the university police's jurisdiction ends at College Avenue, none of the crimes occurring across that border were included in the security report.

When Congress passed the federal act in 1990, Pennsylvania's colleges and universities were presented with a unique challenge -- they now had to comply with both the federal and state laws, which differed in their requirements.

The federal law required colleges to report crime statistics not only from the university's jurisdiction, but also from "adjacent public property."

Kline speculated that, with respect to University Park, this "adjacent public property" might include the area between campus and Calder Way, excepting the residences in between, because they are not considered public property. Buildings that are host to university-related classes or events, such as fraternity houses and the Rider Building, 120 S. Burrowes St., are also included in the data for the federal requirements.

"The off-campus data only represents fraternities and other places directly associated with Penn State," said Thomas Harmon, director of university police. "If you want a better representation of crimes off campus, contact State College police."

When faced with the task of designing a map for his Geography 357 (Geographic Informational Science) class, Matt Riggle (senior-geography) decided to take on a project that could actually help people.

His goal was to create a map of both campus and downtown that documented the types and the frequency of crimes that occurred on both sides of College Avenue.

After contacting the State College Police Department, which said it could take three weeks to compile the needed data, Riggle said, "I started to realize I'd bitten off more than I could chew."

He did not complete the map, but he did seek out "dangerous-looking" areas, such as the bushes surrounding the HUB lawn, and photograph them. He also looked into the location of campus security phones.

"There's not a single security phone in the entire area [of the HUB lawn] and wherever there is light at night, it casts a really harsh shadow around the bushes, presenting a lot of locations for people to hide," he said.

In addition to limited off-campus data, the standards for federal crime reporting could present a distorted picture of the true climate with regard to safety at the university.

Although the data for 2003 hasn't been officially released to the public, it has been calculated, Harmon said.

The preliminary 2003 data show 15 reported sexual assaults on campus, an increase of three from the previous year. When the final data for 2003 is released, however, it will show an increase of only one sexual assault, Harmon said.

"Two of the sexual offenses were committed along with other more serious offenses -- burglary and simple assault," Harmon said. "The Uniform Crime Report records an incident only once, for the most serious offense alleged."

Kline gave an extreme example of how a sexual assault could be omitted from the final crime statistics.

"If I walk into your unlocked dorm room and steal a pack of gum, that's burglary," Kline said. "If I happen to sexually assault you while I'm there, that crime could be masked [and not reported in the crime report] because of the fact that I committed a burglary."

In other words, because burglary is a felony, classified by the UCR as a more serious crime than sexual assault, which is a misdemeanor, only the burglary would be accounted for in the crime report.

Differences in the data-compiling systems used by university and city police departments could cause difficulties in standardizing the data collected at each school, Kline said.

A shared computer database makes the job of collecting the crime statistics that are in the borough's jurisdiction, but in the area subject to the Clery Act, a simpler task for university police than for other universities.

Some cities do not log their crime statistics in a manner that lends itself to the specifications of the federal Clery Act, making it impossible or very difficult to discern downtown crimes that must be reported by the university from those which must not.

As a result, Kline said, these universities end up including many crimes in their reports that are not required by the law. This superfluous reporting results in an exaggerated picture of the danger levels at the affected schools.

Another factor that could affect how accurately the report reflects a university's safety is the number of sexual assaults that are reported to campus services other than the police.

The university's Coalition to Address Relationship and Sexual Violence is a group that aids victims of abuse and violence, but in an anonymous manner. The incidents are not investigated unless reported to the police, which is the victim's option.

The data collected by the coalition come primarily from university police, University Health Services and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). The data reflect the number of students seeking services as a result of incidents they have described as sexual assaults. This information is collected to help estimate the number of sexual assaults that are reported to university officials, the general nature of the offenses and the services provided to victims.

The statistics reported by the coalition include on- and off-campus occurrences. In 2002, the coalition recorded 91 incidents; in 2001, 88; and in 2000, 107.

Such numbers provide a stark contrast to the Clery Act figures for the same years, which average 23 sexual assaults per year.

Susan DelPonte, program assistant at the Center for Women Students, said the coalition exists to help victims and give them choices, not to force them to report incidents to the police.

"The people involved in sexual assault on campus encourage victims of assault and violence to talk to CAPS, and we inform them that they can report it to the police," DelPonte said. "We tell them to do whatever they feel comfortable doing. We don't want them to feel unsafe or forced."

Penn State has taken initiatives in an attempt to prevent sexual assault and to make students aware of the problem.

During the First-Year Testing, Counseling and Advising Program (FTCAP), incoming freshmen are given a 40-minute talk by peer facilitators about rape, sexual assault, alcohol and related issues. The program is created and run by the Center for Women Students at Penn State.

DelPonte said she thinks the sexual assault orientation program has a lasting effect on students.

"When the school gets feedback about the FTCAP program, students say our program is what really stands out," DelPonte said. "It is a serious problem, but we try to make the presentation somewhat exciting. We don't want to scare the students; we want people to understand."

The program put on by Penn State is not mandated by law, but DelPonte said most universities across the nation have similar presentations.

"Two years ago we researched different schools, and we found that a lot of colleges have elaborate programs to get the seriousness of this problem across to their students," DelPonte said.

Jennifer Sites (senior-media studies) was raped three years ago in her dorm room by an acquaintance. She spoke about her experience at a mid-February forum to take action against sexual assault.

In a phone interview with The Daily Collegian, Sites said the methods for reporting crime at universities are insufficient.

"Well, if they're covering up a sexual assault in the form of a burglary or break in, then they're not really achieving their goal, are they?" Sites said.

She said it was important that students and parents be informed of the borough's safety level in addition to that of the campus.

"If I were sending my daughter or son to a university, I would certainly want to know," she said.