Last Tuesday, the Office of Safety and Security released its Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, known as the Clery Report, for the 2024-2025 academic year. Associate Vice President of Safety and Security Randy Nichols announced the report’s release in an email to students and employees. The report contains campus crime and residence hall fire statistics from 2021 to 2023.

The number of judicial referrals for on-campus liquor law violations decreased slightly from 61 to 57, continuing a downward trend from the 80 violations in 2021. The number of on-campus drug law violations decreased from two in 2022 to zero in 2023. No on-campus arrests have been made for liquor or drug law violations over the past three years.

Consistent with the change announced last year, the College no longer reports violations of federal drug laws for marijuana offenses that are decriminalized in Maine, which Nichols reiterated in his email to the campus community.

Two on-campus arson offenses occurred in 2023, an increase from the zero arson offenses in the two years prior. Both arson cases list “burn marks on elevator light panels” as the cause of the fires in the residence halls fire section of the report. The number of on-campus burglaries decreased from two in 2022 to one this year, and no incidents of motor vehicle theft occurred in 2023, while one occurred in 2022.

Five on-campus cases of rape and three cases of fondling were reported in 2023, a slight uptick from the four and two cases respectively reported in 2022. Additionally, two on-campus cases of dating violence and three cases of stalking, which fall under the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, were reported in 2023. No offenses under this act were reported last year.

At the beginning of the report, Nichols and Executive Director of Safety and Security Bill Harwood stressed that violent crime is very rare on Bowdoin’s campus. Still, they emphasized the individual responsibility each student holds for their safety, which in turn contributes to the safety of the whole campus.

“Bowdoin does everything it can to create a safe environment, but you alone are responsible for your personal safety,” Nichols and Harwood wrote. “Together, with the common good in mind, we create a safe community by being aware, reporting suspicious activity and caring for each other’s well-being.”