On August 20, Your Local Security released a report revealing West Texas A&M University as the Second Safest College Campus in Texas.

“To help future college students make safety-driven decisions, the team here at Your Local Security runs an annual report* on the safest college campuses nationally,” said YourLocalSecurity.com.

Your Local Security is an authorized online retail affiliate of ADT Home Security. Every year, their team compiles data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and the U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety and Security to write and release a safety report to the public. If data was not submitted to the FBI or the Department of Education by the college or the city in which the college was located, they were not included in the report. 

“Oh, gosh, it just makes us as proud as punch I mean we’re really happy to hear that [WTAMU is the second safest campus in Texas]. We probably think we’re number one,” said Assistant Chief of Police Robert Byrd.

WTAMU Nightwatch does weekly walks around campus to make sure that everyone’s personal belongings are secured, and that there are no major crimes being committed. The student-ran organization also helps further the campus’ connection to the university police department by creating a safe environment for students to report anything they may see or experience on campus.

“As far as our department goes, personally, I think a lot of [what we do to make students feel safe] is just we try to be visible, we try to be seen,” said Byrd. “We offer programs and opportunities to instruct student groups, faculty, staff on any number of things that promote safety.” 

The main campus of colleges in Texas that had a total enrollment of a minimum of 5,000 students were studied. These campuses were those that were either a public, private or a non-profit institution, offered two or four year degrees and those that had available data. These requisites included that of 41 colleges in the state of Texas and is where Your Local Security derived their report from.

“It feels really good to know that [WTAMU Nightwatch has] contributed to helping make WT the second safest campus in Texas. That is what we strive for as an organization!” said Molly Analore, sophomore social work major and vice president of WTAMU Nightwatch.

Four factors were considered when making the report: violent crime per population, property crime per population, hate crimes per enrolled students and violence against women per enrolled females. Each of these measures was normalized on a scale of 0 to 1 and then was weighted for a final score. Violent crime made up 15 percent of the final score while property crime was five percent and hate crimes and violence against women were the final 80 percent.

“If you see something, say something. It doesn’t have to be anything big, even if you see someone on campus that you’re unsure of, please let someone know so we can check on the situation,” said Analore. “It’s a whole lot better to report something and find out it was something minor versus not reporting it and it turning out to be a major situation.”

While compiling this information, Your Local Security discovered some “interesting” findings. Of the 41 Texas colleges, 14 reported not incidences of violence against women or hate crimes. Also, Houston has the third highest property crime rate per capita and the highest violent crime rate per capita.

For access to the original report about the safest college campus in Texas provided by Your Local Security, visit https://www.yourlocalsecurity.com/availability/tx#safest-college-campuses.

*Your Local Security has updated their methodology since publishing 2018’s Safest College Campuses by State, so readers may see slightly different results.