Journalist's Toolbox 45: Resources for Tracking Sexual Assault on Campus

April 7, 2022

Apr 7

Tracking Sexual Assault on Campus

Editor’s note: This is a special Thursday edition of the Toolbox newsletter.

Sexual assault cases have been increasing on college campuses for years. Covering this issue is difficult as university officials often try to hide details and even data on the crimes through campus police and misuse of FERPA laws.

We have resources on the Journalist’s Toolbox College Media and Crime Databases pages to help you dig into the data, know university compliance laws and track the issue on a local and national scale.

Here are a few key tools to get you started:

Clery Center for Security on Campus
Campus crime data and compliance information.

National Center for Education Statistics Data Center
Nationwide data on colleges and universities.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Tracking Sexual Assault Investigations

Education Writers Association Tipsheets
A great set of guides on how to cover issues at K-12 and higher ed levels.

Around the Web

Sources of Color connects journalists with subject matter experts and people of color who have stories to tell. Sources of Color uses customized matching to connect journalists with a diverse pool of potential interviewees.
BBC Africa Eye: Digital Forensics Dashboard is a collation of some essential tools tailored to journalists using open source intelligence (OSINT) to carry out investigations.
Justice Map is a high-resolution map of race and income powered by the US Census. Includes open data layers that you can use to make your own maps, an API, and a Spatial Justice Test to do your own spatial analysis.
Introduction to Web Scraping is a great python scraping primer from Mindy McAdams at the University of Florida.

Cool Tool Tuesday

Don’t forget that at 1 p.m. CT each Tuesday, we feature a new resource on #cooltooltuesday, like you see in our Around the Web section of this newsletter. Be sure to check it out and retweet it. Here’s a video of some of my past faves:

In Quotes …

“Journalism can change your life. It gives you a front row seat to life and all its opportunities.” --Charles L. Overby

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