Reported sexual offenses, burglaries and liquor violations have risen since 2010, according to reports released Monday afternoon.
Under the arrest category, on-campus liquor law violations increased from 95 incidents to 182. Under the disciplinary referrals category, the same violation increased from 403 incidents to 587.
"Largely that's due to better enforcement, partially it's due to excise police increasing their activities," Joan Todd, executive director of public relations, said. "Additionally, we're being more vigilant than ever in our efforts to identify and help students who are struggling with alcohol-related issues."
Todd said she was not able to specify how the university is helping these students because of privacy regulations.
Police Chief Gene Burton said attributing the increase to excise activity is anecdotal because there has been no statistical evidence.
The 2012 Campus Security Report and the 2012 Campus Fire safety reported that burglary increased from 18 incidents in 2010 to 31 in 2011 for on-campus.
Todd said the majority of these incidents is attributed to a rash of break-ins to vending machines on campus.
Police said they believe they identified a subject when the person was arrested on unrelated burglary charges elsewhere in Muncie. After the arrest, the campus vending machine burglaries stopped.
"We felt fairly certain we had the right person, we just weren't able to gather enough evidence to take them to trial," Burton said. "We feel like we incidentally solved those particular incidences."
The number of on-campus forcible sex offenses rose from three incidents in 2010 to eight in 2011.
"As for the sexual offenses, we believe the increase in reports could be due to our ongoing efforts to alert students to resources on campus and let them know they have compassionate help they need," Todd said. "In other words, students are reporting more incidents."
Todd said the university is working to prevent these incidents from increasing in the future.
"We are continuing to provide extensive educational resources designed to help students make better choices," she said. "We also, of course, have campus activities that provide fun alternatives to drinking. We also think that our awareness and education efforts extend to prevention of sexual assault as well, at least that is the design for those."
According to the available data, there have been no reported campus hate crimes in the last three years. In addition, there were no fires in 2011 in residence halls, university apartments or greek on-campus residences.
The 28-page security report, compiled by The Office of Student Rights and Community Standards, informs the public of Ball State's policies on alcohol, illegal drugs and reporting crimes.
Information is also provided for students regarding sexual assault prevention, safety awareness and crime prevention.
The 2012 Campus Fire Safety Report focus is for on-campus procedures that are conducted in the residence halls once a semester as well as training and fire safety improvements.
The Higher Education Act requires Title IV institutions to make the reports available annually.
- Rachel Stenger contributed to this article.
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