Arson on Campus

Arson is a Clery Act reportable offense category — willful burning of property.. Across the 3-year reporting window from 2021 to 2023, US colleges and universities cumulatively reported 1,647 arson incidents on-campus. The most recent year on record (2023) shows 672 incidents across 5,673 reporting institutions, an average of 0.12 per reporting school. Year-over-year, arson reporting rose by 24.2% — a signal that should be read alongside reporting-practice changes, not only real-world incidence.

The peak year for arson reporting was 2023 with 672 incidents. An average of 5,673 institutions submitted data each year across the reporting window. The single institution with the most reported arson incidents in 2023 is Cornell University in ITHACA, NY with 16 incidents (2% of the national total). Schools reporting zero incidents are not automatically safer than high-count schools — the Clery Act compliance rate, reporting culture, campus enrollment, and the presence of mandatory reporter training all shape what reaches the federal dataset.

The figures on this page cover on-campus incidents only — additional categories in the Clery Act dataset cover non-campus buildings, public property adjacent to campus, and residential facilities separately. When comparing institutions, always anchor the count against enrollment size: a research university with 40,000 students and 30 reported incidents has a dramatically lower per-capita rate than a 2,000-student college with 10 reported incidents. The tables below rank institutions by raw incident count rather than by per-student rate, so treat top-of-list schools as starting points for comparison rather than unsafe-campus verdicts. Jump into each school's detail page to see enrollment, safety score, and peer comparisons side by side.