Men made up about three-fourths of the arrests that the UAF Police Department logged in 2006, according to department statistics.

"There's probably a sociological reason for that," said Lt. Syrilyn Tong. "I don't know if they push the envelope more, try to get away with more, or are bigger rule breakers."

In 2006, university police arrested 216 men and 68 women for crimes other than minor consuming alcohol, Tong said. For minor consuming offenses that did not involve driving under the influence, the police nabbed 29 males and 16 females.

Kraig Hays, an assistant professor in the Department of Justice who will teach a "Gender and Crime" course this summer, said studies show men commit more crimes and do it more publicly, while women tend to commit crimes that aren't out in the open.

Still, he added, self-report surveys by researchers have shown that not only are women busted less often but that they also report committing fewer crimes.

Men also tend to commit more violent crimes than women, he said.

"I guess it's just the socialization process," he said.

For the police, Tong said, gender doesn't matter when a crime is observed.

"As far as what we see that causes us to make an arrest, it is the same, whether they're male or female," she said.

Most of the arrests, she noted, came as a result of police pulling over vehicles.

"If they're in a vehicle, we generally don't see the driver," Tong said. "It's irrelevant what the gender is. It's not like we're targeting men who are driving or stumbling down the road."

Hays said there's a reason men are cited more when police pull cars over.

"For men and women in a vehicle, the man is almost always driving, so that would skew that a bit," he said.

Someone who is not driving, he noted, would not be able to be charged with a DUI.

Most of the cases for both genders at UAF involved driving under the influence, driving with a revoked license, or drugs, Tong said. Others involved arrest warrants.

When possible, female officers search women and male officers search men, Tong said. Nearly always the police use a video camera or witness to ensure against harassment lawsuits.

Nationally, men dwarf women in arrests as well. In 2005, the most recent year for which statistics were available, men made up 70.2 percent of the nearly 1.3 million arrests recorded, according to the FBI.

For minor consuming, Tong said the gender gap appears closer than what she's observed or heard about at other campuses nationally.

"I wonder if that's a kind of Alaska proportion, or if it's state by state," she said. "It does seem like it'd be closer here than what you'd see anecdotally at other colleges."

Still, men overshot women by a two-to-one ratio for underage drinking. Tong, who had never broken down UAF campus crime statistics by gender until the Sun Star asked, could only guess why men were being arrested so much more often than women. It's not a matter of getting caught more, though, she said.

"I don't want to say that they're more risk takers either," Tong said.

Tong completed compiling campus police statistics earlier this month to meet federal Clery Act reporting requirements. The Clery Act, enacted by Congress in 1990, was named after 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery, who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986.

At UAF, forcible sexual offenses in campus residences climbed from one in 2005 to three in 2006. A fourth sexual offense last year occurred on public property, defined as sidewalks, streets and lots around campus.