The most recent estimate showed 21,096 injuries associated with cheerleading last year. Many colleges understate the number of crimes on their campuses. Some colleges have not counted crimes that occurred on city streets running through their campus. Other schools have omitted on-campus rapes that were reported to crisis centers or local police rather than to campus security. Some have not counted incidents that took place in fraternity or sorority houses.
Critics say colleges have wanted to avoid bad publicity.
Campus administrators argue that federal reporting requirements approved by Congress in 1990 were too vague. Now the U.S. government, using an amended version of the campus crime reporting law, is making an unprecedented effort to get accurate crime reports from colleges that receive federal aid. Michael Farris, a leader of the home-schooling movement, envisions a school as rigorous in religious devotion, with daily chapel, a dress code and dating by parental consent, as it is in academic work. Its graduates will form a new vanguard of conservative Christian activists who he predicts will one day steer public policy. Patrick Henry College's first four dormitories are still under construction.