ULM was identified as the school with the ninth most drug and alcohol arrests, per a report from Rehabs.com.

Specifically, ULM is ranked 10th in most on-campus drug arrests and 37th in most on-campus alcohol arrests. Rehabs.com collected this data in 2011 from the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education.

The Department of OPE’s data comes from the crime statistics colleges are required to report under the Clery Act.

ULM disputes its placement on the list, specifically the “on-campus arrests” part. Donna Bernard, director of media relations, said the numbers are likely misleading.

“The arrests and incidents that UPD reports to Clery includes surrounding areas of ULM and the purpose of that is to keep ULM as safe an environment for students as possible,” Bernard said.

This includes Desiard, 165 and “all surrounding areas that directly impact campus.”

The Clery Act requires colleges to report all incidents in patrolled areas. This includes, public property like a street, sidewalk or parking lot that is adjacent to a school facility.

It doesn’t include “crimes that occur on privately owned property that is frequented primarily by students, but which is nevertheless not in any way “controlled” by the school (such as a favorite off-campus bar or an apartment complex) do not have to be included in the annual report.“

In addition to UPD going beyond the required patrol area, another possible inflation are the arrests of people who aren’t actively enrolled at ULM.

If UPD arrests six people smoking weed outside of Taco Bell it gets reported to Clery as six drug arrests on-campus even if only two of them attend ULM.

Bernard said a smaller campus has more opportunities to patrol nearby areas.

“It’s just important to us as a smaller university,” Bernard said. “I can’t say that every university feels that way but if I have 30,000 students, I might not be able to look at the surrounding community.”

ULM’s high ranking on the lists contrasts the results from the CORE alcohol survey conducted on campus.

Wayne Brumfield, vice president of student affairs, said the survey data is used for programming in the residents hall for students and to get indication of where they are as an institution.

“I think the thing I’m most interested in is the number of drinks per week. We’ve been consistently about 2, 2.1, 2.2. You know it’s up a little bit from about two years ago, 2.4 to 2.7. But we’ve never gone over 2,” Brumfield said.

He added that in 2011 ULM’s students reported they had 2.4 drinks per week when the national average was 5.2. The percentage of ULM students who reported binge drinking in 2011 was 29 percent. The national average was 46.1 percent.

The CORE survey stems from a meeting with all of Louisiana’s colleges and universities where they agreed to survey their campuses every year to monitor the drug and alcohol uses of students.

The survey was annual until recently.

After receiving the survey information, they start the process of surveying 10 percent of the campus population by randomly selecting classes. The results are then sent to University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, who analyzes the data. All other universities follow the same process.

Kenya Ross, a senior communications major, believes the results of the CORE survey are more accurate than Rehabs.com’s list.

“Before I transferred to ULM, I observed worse at my last school and especially when it came to alcohol. I can remember ULL served alcohol at one of their spring fests events on campus,” Ross said.

Rehabs.com’s list only includes 1,000 of the nation’s over 7,000 colleges because they only included colleges with at least 5,000 students. Their reasoning for this was “you get some odd and probably not very fair results for the small ones. ”