AUSTIN, Texas — Following the indecent assault of a Texas State student on Sunday, Oct. 11, CBS Austin analyzed sex crimes data across five major public universities across Texas.
Public and private postsecondary institutions that participate in federal student financial aid programs must follow the Jeanne Clery Act, which mandates the reporting of certain campus crime data.
Colleges and universities with a police of security department must publish a 60-day daily crime log as well as an Annual Security Report (ASR) every Oct. 1.
ASRs include three years of crime data on a college or university’s campus, as well as incidents in areas adjacent to campus or under a university police department’s jurisdiction.
What does the data reveal?
CBS Austin analyzed the 60-day daily crime logs at UT Austin, Texas A&M (College Station), Texas State, Texas Tech (Lubbock), and the University of Houston main campus (UH).
We filtered for any reported incidents of sex crimes, including sexual assaults, indecent assaults, indecent exposures, fondlings, sexual harassment, sexual coercions and incidents classified as a “sex offense.”
The results are as follows:
Sex crimes by university according to 60-day daily crime log data (Photo: CBS Austin/Audrey Wong)
This chart tallies incidents that occurred on campus or at a university-owned student housing facility since Aug. 14:
Sex crimes on-campus and at university-owned housing facilities, according to 60-day daily crime log data reports (Photo: CBS Austin)
The classifications of sex crimes in the 60-day logs varied slightly by university. For example, UT categorize certain crimes as “indecent assault” with no further description. Texas A&M and UH included fondling as a subcategory of some of its indecent assault reports. Texas Tech did not label any of their reports with a simple title, but instead provided a brief description of each reported incident. Texas State listed all their sex crimes under a “sex offense” label.
However, categorization of sex crimes was more consistent in each school’s AFR.
In the AFRs, sex crimes were categorized under four subclassifications: rape, statutory rape, fondling and incest. UH used the term “forcible sex” instead of “rape.”
The chart below shows the number of rape cases reported in each school’s most recent AFR, which include data from 2023 through 2025.
Rapes by university from 2023 to 2025 according to their 2025 Clery AFRs (Photo: CBS Austin/Audrey Wong)
UT Austin reported nearly identical numbers of rape cases for the past three years. The most stark difference in the number of rape cases was at Texas A&M, which reported 47 rapes cases in 2023, 25 in 2024, and 26 in 2025.
UT students say there is stigma around reporting
In Austin, several UT students said they were aware of resources available to students who are victimized by sex crimes, but stigma around speaking up prevents many from making a report with the university or law enforcement.
Gabriel Ibarra, a junior at UT, said the Cornell Seven case comes to mind.
“Especially with like TikTok, Instagram, all that stuff, you don’t know if your name is going to come out to light, especially what happened with the Cornell Seven. Like recently, I’ve been hearing people were trying to leak who this girl is, and that must like put like a lot of pressure and a lot of anxiety on her… she’s worrying every day about trying to stay anonymous.”
Third year student Sean O’Brien said fraternities at UT also have an adverse reputation around sexual assault.
“There’s a really bad stigma involving fraternities…” he said. “What I want to clarify is that frats don’t commit the sexual assault. It just so happens that a lot of people who are committing sexual assault want to put themselves in that environment because they know that’s where people are vulnerable and intoxicated.”
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A pair of students who asked to remain anonymous said the university does a “good job” of educating students on resources available to victims of sexual assault, but the attitude of some students on campus can deter victims from utilizing them.
“There’ll be other people who are, like, they’ll be very against it too and they’re, like, kind of making fun of victims. So I think that’s also kind of stopping people from reporting even though we have those resources available to us,” said one of the students.
To survivors of sexual assault and other sex crimes, the other student added,
“I know sometimes it can be hard because society doesn’t treat you the best, but just know your story is very important and what happened to you should never happen, and you deserve justice.”
CBS Austin reached out to each of the five universities, but we did not hear back in time for this story’s publication.