University of Iowa reports spike in hate crimes, alcohol arrests

IOWA CITY — In June 2024 on the main University of Iowa Health Care campus, a white patient hit a Black security officer in the face — calling him racial epithets during the assault, according to a UI Department of Public Safety incident report.

That attack was among 13 reported “hate crimes” on the UI campus in 2024 — a spike from just one in 2023 and six in 2022, according to a new UI 2025 Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act and Fire Safety report being presented to the Board of Regents this week.

The report — cataloging 2024 crime statistics for the main UI campus — identifies offensive, racist, or hateful messages written on white boards as vandalism that “should be considered a hate crime.”

“The increase in reported hate crimes in 2024 is largely due to six incidents involving vandalism of dry erase boards,” UI Campus Safety spokeswoman Hayley Bruce said.

The U.S. Department of Education's help desk in August 2025 issued explicit guidance to characterize racist or hateful whiteboard messages as vandalism and a hate crime.

“While this clarification was provided to us after the 2024 reporting period, the university had already begun classifying similar incidents in that manner based on the intent and nature of the messages,” Bruce said. “This approach more accurately reflects the impact of such behavior on targeted communities and ensures consistency in reporting.”

The hate-related vandalism on the UI campus last year attacked victims’ race, religion, and gender identity, according to the crime report. In addition to the one race-related aggravated assault at the hospital, the university also took two reports of race-related intimidation and two reports of race-related simple assault.

“The two simple assaults were related to an incident in which someone threw something out of the window of a car at someone and called them a racial slur,” Bruce said.

University of Northern Iowa officers also in 2024 saw an increase in reported hate crimes, according to that campus’ new security and fire safety report.

Where one gender identity-related larceny was reported in 2022, and two sexual orientation hate crimes were investigated in 2023, UNI police last year fielded five hate crime reports.

Two involved vandalism related to sexual orientation and gender identity; one was race-related intimidation; and two were religion-related residential larcenies.

One of the incidents was reported in March by a concerned parent who said someone was “putting condoms containing a milky like substance on his door handle and writing on his white board that he is ‘gay’,” according to a police report.

When police interviewed a residence life coordinator at the residence hall in question, he confirmed a student had reported multiple incidents like the one the parent called police about and said he believed “incidents like this are happening to other students.”

No one was arrested or charged in that case.

Iowa State University, per its new security and fire safety report, took no hate crime reports in 2024, down from two in 2023.

But many college and university campuses nationally align with the UI and UNI experience. FBI data lists schools, colleges, and universities as the third most common location for hate crimes — tallying 1,049 in the last year and 5,431 in the last five years.

UI alcohol arrests soar

The University of Iowa in 2024 also saw an exponential spike in arrests for liquor law violations from two in 2023 to 71 in 2024, according to the new report.

Liquor-related “disciplinary referrals” — when a person is referred for campus disciplinary action — also increased from 129 in 2023 to 183 last year.

The increase, according to Bruce, can be attributed to underage possession of alcohol citations during football games.

“Given increasing potential safety concerns we observed from people throwing items on to the field during football games, we increased related enforcement strategies,” she said.

Both UNI and Iowa State, meanwhile, saw their liquor law arrests and referrals drop last year. Where UNI police in 2022 referred 134 people for liquor law violations, that dropped to 87 last year.

Where Iowa State police made 220 liquor law arrests in 2022, that dropped to 163 last year. Dating violence on that campus increased, though, from six reports in 2022 to 13 last year.

Reports of dating violence on the UI campus hovered at 14, down from 18 in 2023 but up from eight in 2022; while stalking climbed to 108 from 97 in 2022.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com