Citing Flawed Analysis, Website Corrects Erroneous Crime Ranking

With Tuesday night's finding that a website wrongly included Penn College on a list of unsafe campuses, President Davie Jane Gilmour has updated the institution's response.



"The FindTheBest/StartClass website that recently included Penn College on its list of “25 most dangerous colleges” has acknowledged errors in its analysis of crime-reporting data and problems with its methodology, resulting in a faulty ranking of colleges.

"Last night, the site published new rankings based on corrected data analysis. Penn College is no longer on the list.

"Here is an excerpt from the website’s explanation:

"Note: We identified an error in the original analysis of the data used in the Feb. 3, 2015 report on dangerous colleges in the United States, which resulted in an incorrect ranking of colleges. The following is an updated report which has corrected the previous error, clarified the criteria and methodology used, and resulted in a new ranking. We’ve reached out to the various publications that ran stories using the original data to provide them with the updated rankings. We sincerely apologize for any confusion and inconvenience this data issue has caused.”

"The ratings were the source of much concern throughout our community. We spent the better part of the day on Tuesday responding to communications from concerned students, parents, alumni and others.

"While we are pleased that the rankings have been rectified, we fully understand that no amount of crime, regardless of the severity, is acceptable at an institution of higher learning.

"We take all crime seriously, and campus safety remains a top priority."

Thank you,
Davie Jane Gilmour, Ph.D.