A "Primetime" ABC news report claimed on Nov. 18 that UMass-Amherst had the highest rate of violent crime among U.S. colleges with "extra-large" campuses of over 11,000 students. According to the UMass Daily Collegian, the report has outraged UMass students and officials, who believe that the method used to calculate the on-campus crimes has resulted in an inaccurate report.

UMass spokesperson Ed Blaguszewski told The Collegian that ABC calculated the university's crime rate by dividing the number of on-campus crimes by the total number of enrolled students. Blaguszewski said that ABC should have instead divided the number of on-campus crimes only by the total number of students actually living on campus.

"Most crimes occur at night, and occur in and around residence halls," Blaguszewski told The Collegian. "When these crimes occur, it affects the residence population, not everybody who's enrolled." Blaguszewski believes that UMass was portrayed in a negative light because UMass currently has the 11th-largest on-campus housing system in the country and UMass residents are therefore much safer than the report claims.

Blaguszewski demonstrated his point by comparing UMass to the University of Michigan, which has a greater number of enrolled students but fewer on-campus residents. If both schools had an equal number of violent crimes on-campus, UMass would have the higher crime rate according ABC's calculations because it has less students overall even though more UMass students live on-campus.

UMass officials also note that ABC did not use statistics after 2003 in the report. UMass' crime rate improved from 2003 to 2004, but the report did not mention this improvement. According to The Collegian, the number of violent on-campus crimes was 57 in 2002, 58 in 2003 and declined to 28 in 2004, a drop of more than 50 percent.

UMass Chancellor John Lombardi said that the university may sue ABC if its report was false. "If you live and work here, the report doesn't make any sense," Lombardi said in a statement to the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov. 24.

In the "Primetime" report, hidden cameras revealed an ABC producer walking past security in two dormitories without requests for identification. UMass disagrees with ABC's report, and University officials say that the institution takes on-campus crime seriously. UMass Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs and Campus Life Michael Gargano released a campus-wide e-mail Nov. 23 informing students that a new private security team would now be patrolling dormitories.