While trends in college campus safety across the nation reports a growing appreciation for anonymous incident reporting and all its benefits, there are a number of reasons to have raised eyebrows. That is, this is a concern that North Central College, an educational institution allowing anonymity, strives to recognize and honor, in all its complexities.
“We will accept anonymous reports,” Marc Molina, director of campus safety, said. “I would say that anonymous reporting does have some inherent challenges in that the college is very receptive to receiving those reports, but we’re also proactive about investigating reports.”
Anonymous incident reporting is one method of maintaining community safety seeing a lot of growth and development across the nation in recent years. Incidents of cyberbullying and other problems are sometimes noted for having sparked the trend towards anonymous reporting.
The College places a disclaimer at the top of its incident reporting forms as a safe practice. If a user would like to maintain anonymity in reporting an incident, they have two options to explore.
First, all users are prompted at the top of the incident report for their name and contact information. That is, users can remain exempt from supplying this information because it is not a required component in submitting a report.
Users may also choose to enter their name and contact information and provide a comment in the space allotted asking for anonymity.
“The online incident reporting form was introduced in fall 2013,” Kevin McCarthy, assistant director of student affairs, said. “Previous to this time students were still able to submit incident reports, but there was no electronic means of doing so.”
Although online incident reporting forms can be submitted after the fact, North Central College uses a similar form to address community concerns early on too.
“The Early Alert referral form has been around for a few years but was primarily used by faculty to report academic concerns,” McCarthy stated. “The newly revamped Early Alert referral form was created and rolled out in the winter of 2014.”
The entire campus community is encouraged to submit reports should concerns arise. While no crime or incident may be involved in some cases, the Early Alert referral may seem intrusive or too forward thinking. Assistant Dean of Students Jeremy Gudauskas explained the meaning in having this type of reporting.
“One of the reasons it was implemented is it helps us get a broader picture about potential problems that students might have,” Gudauskas said. “It’s really designed as the name implies, early alert, give us the ability to intervene when students or others have difficulties before it becomes too late.”
Although anonymous reporting forms are becoming a growing trend on college campuses, Gudauskas said they’re not as widely used here as one might assume.
“We’ve actually had very few anonymous reports come through. I’d say a handful (of anonymous reports) in the last year and a half, which has been fine,” Gudauskas said. “And the ones that have come through that are sensitive in nature, as far as who made the report, we have done our very best to honor the fact that somebody would make a report.”
Some might argue that the College affords little regard to privacy when it comes to incident reports and maintaining a safe environment.
“I believe that people feel like they report those incidents in relative privacy,” Molina said in refuting the concern. “I think there’s a more of a sense that they can report things. The drawback is that it can limit our investigative ability.”
Anonymous reports may not have enough details in order determine whether incidents are occurring on or off-campus to determine how many people or who specifically may be involved.
In another instance, anonymity reporting may hinder campus safety’s ability to circle back to the reporter to let them know that an incident has been investigated and the situation had been handled.
However, reports with full disclosure allow campus safety to let the reporter know that their report was taken seriously and it was investigated, and when information can be shared, it allows the reporter to know the situation was resolved.
The Office of Student Affairs receives and handles all incoming reports so McCarthy revealed some details on how successful the college has been in addressing incident reports.
“The college has seen a total of 1,139 incident reports submitted since the fall of 2013,” McCarthy said. “The bulk of these reports would have been submitted by staff in the Office of Campus Safety and the Office of Residence Life. Every report that is submitted is thoroughly reviewed and appropriate action is then taken by college staff.”
Meanwhile, the College has received over a thousand Early Alert referral submissions since its most recent update was instituted, according to McCarthy. Of those, there have been nearly 200 cases discussed by the Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT).
The team is comprised of various members of the campus community, such as Dyson Wellness Center and Student Affairs, just to name a few. Gudauskas said the BIT team takes care of Early Alert referrals of pressing concern. As a group they address a number of issues and concerns involving potential self-harm, disordered eating concerns, and/or disruptive behavior.
Naperville is a relatively safe place when examining crime and incidents in terms of numbers. Still, incident reporting is nothing especially new to the College. It’s seen as largely important in creating a safe campus community.
In addition to the college’s efforts to adhere to the 1992 Jeanne Clery Act, which requires that campus safety publish its crime reports every year, weekly safety reports are posted on the college’s website.
“We hope this report provides information and transparency to all faculty, staff, students, parents and prospective constituents about the community at North Central College,” McCarthy stated. “Additionally, we go above and beyond to post weekly safety reports on the College’s website which we believe are as, or more, important than the annual crime statistics.”
Molina commented on the general importance of incident reporting as it pertains to maintaining safety on campus.
“I think one of the things we view really serious here in campus safety is that we want to make this a safe campus community for everyone, not only the students but the staff and faculty and visitors as well,” Molina said. “So as result, when there is something going on, we’d like to know about it because obviously the quicker we can address it and hopefully eliminate that as an occurrence, the safer the community just is as a whole.”
