Crime in America essays

Crime in America essays Every year half a million college students are targets of bias-driven slurs or physical assaults. Every day at least one hate crime occurs on a college campus. Every minute a college student somewhere sees or hears racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise biased words or images. No campus advertises its crimes or bias incidents; some even hide records and facts from the public eye to avoid having bad reputations. But crime happens, and its scars remain for months, sometimes years. It is, in the words of one expert, The background noise of students lives (Tolerance 1). The best way to fight campus crime is for the students to come together and fight to make a difference. Crime happens on campus, and it happens more than some people realize. Crimes and incidents happen a lot of times because it is students first-time with freedom, or first-time exposure to diverse communities. The big problem with crimes is that victims do not report what happened to them because of the fear of reprisals, embarrassment, and a belief that nothing will be done. A lot of students feel ashamed and are afraid to tell their parents. However, victims are not the only ones not reporting these crimes, college administrators and campus police departments also fail to report and investigate such crimes. The reason for this is that no college wants a reputation of any kind of criminal activity on their campuses, so denial is widespread (Tolerance 2). This was the case at Lehigh University where a 19 year old freshman Jeanne Ann Clery was brutally raped and murdered in her dorm room on April 5, 1986. What Jeanne and her parents did not know was that there were 38 viol ent crimes that happened on Lehigh campus 3 years before her murder. Jeanne parents joined together with other victims and persuaded Congress to enact the Jeanne Clery Act. The Jeanne Clery Act is the landmark federal law, or ...