PULLMAN, Wash. — By at least one measure, Washington State University’s
Pullman location is the safest in the Pacific-10 Conference. Statistics compiled
from PAC-10 university communities show Pullman has the lowest number of
reported crimes.
Different crime measuring methods also indicate Pullman is very safe relative to
other campus communities around the country, but do not place it at the top of
the list.
In 1998, the most recent year for crime statistics, Pullman had a total of 530
reported crimes in major categories. This was the lowest number reported in
any community in the PAC-10. The number two campus community was
Corvallis, Ore., home of Oregon State University, with 2,271 reported crimes in
the same period.
Seattle, home of the University of Washington, reported 53,052 crimes to come
in at number eight. The number nine and ten community was Los Angeles,
home of the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of
Southern California, with 186,281 reported crimes.
Statistics for 1997 are similar. The figures are compiled from the FBI’s annual
uniform crime report and do not reflect per capita crime rates.
WSU Public Safety Director Bill Mercier says the statistics demonstrate clearly
that WSU is a safe environment for students. “Every university is a reflection
of the community it is in, and Pullman is a very low crime area. If you want to
know how safe a campus is, just look at the surrounding area.”
Some 16,000 students are enrolled at WSU Pullman, making it one of the largest
residential campuses in the western United States. The community of Pullman
has 25,630 residents, including the WSU student population.
A campus crime measurement scale, using different methodology that
assesses campus as well as community crime reports, can be found at the
APBnews.com Web site at
http://www.apbnews.com/resourcecenter/datacenter/crimecheck/campus/ .
This index gives the WSU campus a rating of 6, and the community of Pullman
is given a rating of 5 on a scale of 1-10. Lower numbers are safer.
The University of Oregon comes out first and WSU is second in the PAC-10
on the APB scale of campus safety.
It should be noted that there are wide variations in how individual campuses
report crime and the data may not reflect an even comparison. Beginning in
2001, all campuses must report crime uniformly and statistics should become
easier to interpret.
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