Dive Brief:

• Reported sexual assaults at the largest colleges in New England rose 40% from 2012 to 2013, according to a Boston Globe analysis of federally mandated reporting by those colleges.
• Safety experts say the increase is mostly because increased public awareness has made more victims comfortable in reporting sexual assaults and colleges are getting better at collecting the data, the Boston Globe reported.
• The total number of assaults reported in 2013 at the more than two dozen colleges in the analysis was 289, compared to 206 in 2012, and more than twice as many as in 2008.

Dive Insight:

Hampshire College had the highest rate of sexual assaults of the New England schools surveyed, at 13.6 per 1,000 students, followed by Dartmouth College at 5.5 per 1,000. The average was 0.99 per 1,000. Four colleges had a decline in reported assaults, including Amherst College to nine (5.04 per 1,000 students) in 2013, from 17 in 2012.