Parents are always worried about college and student safety. Unfortunately, many families only base their 
information on the reputation of the college, its location, or rumors. To help families make more informed decisions, we conducted a data search of Texas 4- year universities with student bodies of more than 5,000 students, excluding for-profit colleges and those without residential housing, for a total of 35 universities. This data was compiled from 2015 statistics.
The first data set is for Disciplinary Actions taken against students at each campus. The definition of disciplinary action is the referral of a student to a college “official who initiates a disciplinary action of which a record is established and which may result in the imposition of a sanction.”
These disciplinary actions were then categorized into three categories: liquor law violations, drug violations, and illegal weapon violations. Because the size of the student body at these colleges vary from 5,000 to 63,000, it wouldn’t make sense to compare actual violation numbers, so we assessed each college’s data by looking at the number of violations divided by the number of students, which gives us a better comparison between the colleges.
Here are the colleges with the least number of student violations per student.
Here are the colleges with the MOST violations per student, with repeat offenders highlighted. The worse 10 colleges:
The majority of colleges (60%) had no Weapons Violations each year. Most of the other colleges (30%) had 1-3 Weapons violations each year, but UH, UT Arlington, TCU, and Prairie View A&M all had more than 3 weapon violations in 2015.
Criminal Offenses
The next chart we looked into was more serious: violations of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA):
- Domestic Violence
- Dating Violence
- Stalking
