The computer screen doesn’t have chicken pox.The dots covering the map of Baton Rouge on Family Watchdog, the popular sex offender-tracking Web site, mark the residences and workplaces of sex offenders — perpetrators of rape, sexual battery, offenses against children and other crimes.One registered sex offender lives within a quarter-mile of the University, and another three offenders reside within a half mile radius of the University, according to numbers from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office. Thirteen offenders live or work within one mile of campus and another 60 within two miles of campus.The closest offender, convicted of an out-of-state date-rape offense, lives at 3299 Ivanhoe Street near the Northgate area. Sreelatha Yalamanchi, electrical and computer engineering grad student, lives off State Street near the Northgate. She was unaware that Chad Taylor, convicted sex offender on an out-of-state offense, lives blocks away on Ivanhoe Street.Within two months of moving to the neighborhood, she said she experienced a sex offense from a stranger. “[A drunk man] came up to me and started touching me and my hair,” Yalamanchi said. “It was a bad experience.”He only fled when three pedestrians came near, she said. She did not report the incident and said she began riding the bus to avoid similar incidents.Among Southeastern Conference and other southern university cities, the Baton Rouge area ties for the second-most sex offenders per capita at 0.3 percent, according to each state’s respective sex offender registries. Sharing that position is the Knoxville area, home to the University of Tennessee, and Columbia, home of the University of South Carolina.New Orleans, home of Tulane and Loyola Universities, the University of New Orleans and others, topped Baton Rouge with 0.4 percent. LSUPD Capt. Russell Rogè said sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism — there’s a large chance they will commit sex crimes repeatedly. He said this behavior is the reason they are required to update their registration.”Knowledge is power,” Rogè said. According to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, there are 689 sex offenders in the Baton Rouge area. Of those, 498 are actively registered, 23 are wanted for sex offenses, and 168 are incarcerated. There are 382 inactive offenders in Baton Rouge — those who have relocated or whose registration period expired. As of July 31, 38 rapes were reported to have occurred in Baton Rouge since January. In 2008, four forcible sex offenses were reported to have occurred on campus, according to LSUPD statistics — an increase from one such offense in 2007. Two of the offenses in 2008 occurred in on-campus residential facilities.ON-CAMPUS RESOURCESRogè said additional patrols usually linger around residential areas on campus, and extra officers patrol the Quad, Nicholson and Edward Gay Apartments, East and West Campus Apartments and Sorority Row for eight hours each night.Rogè said Residential Life added security cameras to its facilities and gates to the Nicholson and Edward Gay Apartments.”ResLife has done several things to curtail that from happening again,” Rogè said in reference to the 2007 double homicide at the apartments. “Crime’s going to happen no matter what you do.”LSU is an open campus, and Rogè said the presence of two major state and city roads passing through — Nicholson Drive and Highland Road — brings a criminal element to the University.But he said increased security during the past 10 years has helped to keep reported rapes low on campus. Many of the sexual crimes perpetrated on campus are not reported to LSUPD, he said. The victims sometimes choose not to report the incident, and the Student Health Center cannot report incidences it confirms without victim authorization.Ashley Granger, Wellness Education coordinator at the Health Center, said in an e-mail there have been seven anonymous reports so far this year to the Sexual Assault Victim’s Advocacy. Of those, only one was reported to authorities. Since SAVA’s inception in 2003, there have been 79 reports from student survivors of sexual violence. The program and its 60 on-campus personnel provide confidential guidance and support to student victims of sex offense and may decide to report the crime to police, she said. She said the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner provides immediate and comprehensive forensic evaluation, and since the 2006 inception of SANE, nurses have performed 15 exams.Rogè reminds students to travel in well-lit areas and in groups at night, to park in open areas and to use Campus Transit, which is available until 3 a.m. He said pepper spray and stun guns are allowed on campus for protection.Kathy Saichuk, Wellness Education coordinator at the Health Center, said sex offenses are the most under-reported crimes, and SAVA sometimes experiences surges in incident reports, though no clear trends exist. She said the fact that LSU is an open campus makes it a “mini city” where real-city risks exist. She said LSU’s resources need to be utilized for safety.”This is a door-to-door service from five in the evening to 3 a.m.” she said of Campus Transit. “Faculty take advantage of that, too.”OFFENDERS NEAR OTHER UNIVERSITIESThe universities in the SEC with the lowest number of sexual predators per capita include the University of Auburn and the University of Georgia — whose home cities have minimal percentages of sex offenders.The closest sex offenders to Tulane University reside one mile from campus, but the number jumps from seven to 97 at the two-mile mark, according to Louisiana State Police numbers.The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has a sex offender within a quarter-mile of the campus and 36 within one mile.According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, four sex offenders live within a half-mile radius of the University of Florida campus, and 15 live within one mile. The University of Texas has five sex offenders affiliated with the campus itself, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.At the University of Arkansas, three offenders are located within one mile and 12 within two miles.Other state Web sites did not provide radial projections of sex offender residences.Janay Martinez, LSU general studies senior, said she feels safe in when she visits her boyfriend at his State Street residence. She was also unaware of the sex offender on Ivanhoe Street.”Everybody looks out for each other around here,” Martinez said. “[Neighborhood sex offenders are] nerve-wracking as everything else … I think if time was served … he grew up a little.”—-Contact Sarah Lawson at [email protected]