Jennifer Beeman (CVPP)

Jennifer Beeman was the director of the Campus Violence Prevention Program (CVPP) for sixteen years. She retired from the position in June 2009 amid investigations concerning massive inflation of sexual assault statistics and using CVPP funds for her personal use. She overreported sexual assault by more than 2x in some years. She tried to spin this to mean that UC Davis wasn't any worse than the average college campus when it comes to sexual assault, but that people were more comfortable reporting their assaults here than on other campuses.

In April 2009, the campus launched an internal audit into the campus' Clery Act reported sexual assault statistics. The audit concluded that the statistics submitted in 2005, 2006 and 2007 were more than double that the numbers that records could support. According to the audit, the number of sexual assault reported in 2005 under the Clery Act reporting regulations should have been 21 instead of 48, 23 instead of 68 in 2006, and 33 instead of 69 in 2007.

Beeman has never publicly responded to these audit findings. Thus, wide speculation about Beeman's possible ensues. Theories include:

• Beeman may have not complied with Clery Act rules about what constitutes a reportable sexual assault. An assault at a party in Woodland or Sacramento wouldn't be reportable, for example, while an assault on property controlled by a registered student group (say, a fraternity house) would be.
  

• Beeman may have inflated numbers to show that sexual assault awareness efforts at UC Davis were unusually successful, which may have helped to secure Federal grant awards for CVPP from the US Department of Justice. This would make sense considering her statements that she believed that UC Davis doesn't have any more sexual assault than elsewhere, but that students feel more comfortable reporting here.
  

• Beeman was undoubtably aware of research that concludes that sexual assaults go largely unreported. She could have inflated the numbers to be closer to what she thought they should be.

At the same time they went public with their information about the messed up Clery Act numbers, UC Davis officials stated that Beeman had been previously been investigated for receiving improper travel reimbursements from the University, that Beeman had reimbursed the University $1,372 to close the initial investigation, and that a second investigation into Beeman's reimbursements and use of grant funds had been launched. Later articles by the Sacramento Bee revealed that the investigation had evolved into a criminal probe covering multiple aspects of Beeman's finances. Allegations include:

• That Beeman had used $5,400 of University funds intended for the annual Take Back the Night campus rally for her personal expenses, which may have included mortgage payments
  

• That Beeman had authorized $25,000 in payments to an external contractor, Granate Sosnoff of Feminist Media, for work that had not been completed
  

• That Beeman had, additionally, mismanaged or criminally embezzled some portion of over $500,000 in grant-based payments to Feminist Media

As of January 2010, the UC Davis Police Department's investigation into Beeman was ongoing and criminal charges had not been filed. You can read the Statement of Probable Cause that was filed by UCD Police Detective Paul Henoch here - BeemanProbableCause.pdf

On December 9th, 2010 the Sacrament Bee reported the arrest of Jennifer Beeman on suspicion of embezzling public funds and committing eight other felonies related to misusing public money. Story

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2010-01-14 15:52:51   Would the plot of yearly sexual assaults look like a hockey stick? —JimStewart

2010-01-15 14:37:03   Added statement of probable cause —JimStewart