SMU Has Had Way More Drug Arrests Than TCU
On Page 10A of today’s Dallas Morning News, there’s a chart detailing the drug arrests and drug disciplines at various Texas colleges from 2006 through 2010. The schools, and their enrollments, are presented in alphabetical order; the News didn’t bother to rank them by incidents per capita.
Well, with the help of Kate Mitchell, I plugged the numbers into an Excel document so we could do just that. When ranked by drug arrests per capita, SMU (1.16 per 100 students) was second only to UT-Dallas (1.3 per 100). Meanwhile, the only one of the 15 schools with fewer drug arrests per capita than TCU (0.04 per 100) was Texas Wesleyan, which had zero.
But when you rank the schools by drug arrests plus disciplines per capita, TCU (1.95 per 100) is third behind Austin College (3.73 per 100) and Texas Tech (2.62 per 100). SMU is sixth, following North Texas and UTD.
How does SMU fare as far as drug dealer arrests per 100? Isn’t that what these arrests were about? Let’s see, TCU arrested 17 students for dealing and had an undergraduate population of roughly 7800. 17/7800 = 0.2% so, at the very minimum, 1.09 dealer arrests for every 500, assuming no others?
I should also point out that in one day, TCU’s per capita drug arrests shot up to 5X the per capita you reported from the 2010…so either there was a sudden burst of drug-arrestable behavior at TCU, or the 2010 numbers aren’t really reflective of what’s really going on underneath the surface. That should be a major flag. Also, another explanation could be that TCU doesn’t arrest as many drug offenders or simply doesn’t find them. I know you’re reporting “facts” but you should be very suspicious of the numbers you are using. To go from 0.04 to 0.22 per 100 in a single day is a clue to that.
And your point is?
The point is, clearly the TCU 2010 per capita data isn’t reflective of what really is going on, so what’s the value of presenting it as a reference to other schools. Furthermore, this points to an opposite conclusion: SMU and UTD police are more likely to arrest you compared to TCU. Why? Their reported arrests are so low when their actual number of drug incidents is at the very least 5 times higher. SMU draw similar demographics, incomes, and schools ergo TCU probably has similar percentages of use, way way less arrests. Excel statistics is only as useful as it’s analyzer.
As noted in other comments, it’s quite clear that SMU does not have any kind of drug problems at all and everyone should just move along and continue to point fingers at other schools, because SMU is pure as the driven snow.
Umm…so they should just throw out the data because it includes the 100 arrests at once info? Could you be trying harder to make a story fit your own wanted narrative? As the data clearly shows: No, you could not.
Christopher, my comment wasn’t to you but to the writer.
^ original writer, that is….
Could someone please point me to where I can find out more on all the drug bust @ the high school last week & all the arrests made. There were just so many. I cant seem to find that. Sure can find every other topic here ( as long as its pretty ) Thanks in advance.