Fondling is a Clery Act reportable offense category - sexual touching of another person without consent.. Across the 3-year reporting window from 2022 to 2024, US colleges and universities cumulatively reported 13,728 fondling incidents on-campus. The most recent year on record (2024) shows 4,372 incidents, reported by 1,034 of the 5,585 institutions in the survey, an average of 4.23 among the institutions that reported any. Year-over-year, fondling reporting fell by 6.7% - a signal that should be read alongside reporting-practice changes, not only real-world incidence.
Federal campus-safety record
Fondling on campus
National reporting patterns for fondling across 5,585 U.S. colleges and universities.
Offense plate
Sheet CRIME-FONDLING · Fondling 2024 · 1,034 reporters
TIER-COMMON · SIL-LOW · TRD-PEAK · GEO-BROAD · GRP-CRIM · INC-TOT · YR-2024 · SRC-OPE
- TIER-COMMON Broad footprint
- SIL-LOW 81.5% zero
- TRD-PEAK Peaked
- GEO-BROAD 50+ states
- GRP-CRIM #4 in group
- INC-TOT 4,372
- YR-2024 2024
- SRC-OPE OPE Clery
Offense plate for Fondling: reporting tier, zero-reporting share, trend shape, geographic breadth, and Clery group rank. Every stamp is derived from this offence's federal extract, not portal boilerplate.
University of California-Davis fondling count #1 of 1,034 is not Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science rate #1 of 951
University of California-Davis ranks #1 of 1,034 on raw fondling counts (103 incidents) but Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science ranks #1 of 951 on incidents per 1,000 enrolled (43.09, 62 incidents, 1,439 students). University of California-Davis is rate #27 in that 1,000+ student pool. The campus with the most filed reports is not the highest rate. Clery Act on-campus filings, 2024. Filed reports, not a personal risk forecast.
Data source U.S. Department of Education, OPE Campus Safety and Security Survey
- University of California-Davis incidents
- 103
- Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science per 1,000
- 43.09
- 2024 national total
- 4,372
- Campuses reporting ≥1
- 1,034
Fondling count #1 vs rate #1 (2024)
Incidents per 1,000 enrolled students at the raw-count leader and the rate leader. Rate pool is campuses with at least 1,000 students.
- MN
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science (MN)
43.09 per 1,000 students
- CA 2.57
University of California-Davis (CA)
2.57 per 1,000 students
What this shows University of California-Davis ranks #1 of 1,034 on raw fondling counts (103 incidents) but Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science ranks #1 of 951 on incidents per 1,000 enrolled (43.09, 62 incidents, 1,439 students). University of California-Davis is rate #27 in that 1,000+ student pool. The campus with the most filed reports is not the highest rate.
Which campuses filed fondling reports (2024)
Of 5,585 Clery-surveyed institutions, how many recorded at least one on-campus fondling incident versus zero.
- ≥1 filed 1,034
Campuses reporting at least one fondling incident
1,034 campuses
- Zero
Campuses reporting zero fondling incidents
4,551 campuses
What this shows 1,034 of 5,585 surveyed campuses (18.5%) filed at least one fondling incident in 2024; 4,551 (81.5%) reported none. A zero is the ordinary case for this offence, not evidence that a campus is safer than one that filed.
Fondling briefing
What the fondling national total does, and does not, show
The peak year for fondling reporting was 2023 with 4,687 incidents. An average of 1,031 institutions recorded at least one such incident each year across the reporting window. The single institution with the most reported fondling incidents in 2024 is University of California-Davis in Davis, CA with 103 incidents (2% of the national total). 4,551 of the 5,585 surveyed institutions (81.5%) recorded no fondling at all in 2024, so a zero is the ordinary case for this offence rather than a distinguishing result. That still leaves this among the more widely reported offences on the survey: a reporting campus is common enough that a zero says less about the campus than about how consistently it identifies and records fondling.
Within criminal offenses reported in 2024, fondling is the 4th most-reported of 11 offences, at 13.2% of the group's 33,224 incidents. Reporting is widely distributed: the single highest-reporting institution accounts for 2% of the 2024 national total, so no one campus drives this figure. No campus accounts for more than 2% of the 2024 total, so the order below tracks institution size as much as anything else: these are raw incident counts, not per-student rates, and a large university can lead the table without being less safe than a small one.
Institutions in 53 states and territories recorded at least one fondling incident in 2024, and no single state dominates it, the largest being CA at 12.1%, so this is a genuinely national picture rather than a few jurisdictions standing in for one. Every figure here counts on-campus incidents; noncampus buildings and adjacent public property are reported under separate Clery Act geographic categories.
The peak is behind the latest year
Fondling reporting did not move in one direction across this window. It reached 4,687 incidents in 2023 and stood at 4,372 in 2024, so the most recent figure is below the window's high rather than at it. Reading only the latest year against the earliest would hide that turn.
The survey population was unchanged across the window at 5,585 institutions, so the shape is not produced by schools entering or leaving the dataset. Among institutions that reported at least one incident, the average moved from 4.5 to 4.2.
Fondling reporting window
Fondling year-by-year trend
| Year | Total Incidents | Schools Reporting ≥1 | Surveyed | Avg Among Reporters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 4,669 | 1,041 | 5,585 | 4.49 |
| 2023 | 4,687 | 1,019 | 5,585 | 4.60 |
| 2024 | 4,372 | 1,034 | 5,585 | 4.23 |
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education Clery Act Campus Safety Survey · 2024 National trend for Fondling. Counts cover on-campus incidents; 1,034 of 5,585 surveyed institutions reported at least one in 2024.
Fondling: campuses with the most reports (2024)
A long tail, not a three-campus story
The first three rows contribute only 5.6% of reported fondling incidents. Even all 20 campuses shown here account for 21.7%, leaving most of the national total outside this table. Use these rows as examples from a broad reporting footprint, not as institutions that explain the national pattern. The leading trio are University of California-Davis, University of Utah and University of Virginia-Main Campus.
The long tail contains 4,125 incidents across 1,031 other reporting campuses. That base, rather than the podium, carries the national figure.
Ranked by raw count this list favours large campuses. Re-ranked by incidents per 1,000 students across institutions of 1,000+ students, the highest rate for fondling in 2024 is Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science (MN) at 43.09 per 1,000 students (62 incidents, 1,439 students), not University of California-Davis, which leads on raw count.