Zero cases of murder, manslaughter or hate crime were reported while robberies were limited to six cases. The number of reported aggravated assaults fell by one to a total of 13.

Burglaries rose 39 percent to a total of 161 cases and liquor law arrests spiked from 564 in 2005 to 926 in 2006.

MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said it’s inevitable that crime statistics will have ups and downs.

“The numbers are going to vary from year to year,” McGlothian-Taylor said. “I think that we always have to look at MSU as like a city within itself, so crime does occur.”

McGlothian-Taylor said an increase in the number of reported cases attributed to certain crimes can depend on factors beyond annual fluctuation.

She partially attributed the rise in burglaries to the more than 35 university projectors swiped from campus last year. The dramatic increase in alcohol-related arrests may have been a result of more home football games, including the night game against Notre Dame last year, she said.

Kristine Zayko, associate general counsel for the university, said none of the procedures used to gather data for the 2006 report changed in the past year.

The mandatory report, which stemmed from the 1986 rape and murder of a 19-year-old Lehigh University student, is part of an effort to keep students and parents better informed as to the safety and security on campus. The federal law was passed in 1990.

“The goal of the legislation is to try to give parents and perspective students and employees some sense of the amount of crime occurring on campus so that if you’re comparing campuses, you can decide if one campus is safer than another,” Zayko said.

Sociology graduate student Maggie Robinson said she scanned the e-mail with a link to the report, especially for the number of campus sexual assaults.

“As a woman, I was looking specifically at the sex crimes,” Robinson said. “I like to know what’s going on on campus. I think it makes me more aware.”