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SATI e-News: February 26, 2003
     
  

 Congress Reaffirms Commitment to Campus Crime Reporting Act,
But Changes Likely
 
A few short weeks after the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) appealed to Congress to “simplify or eliminate” the Jeanne Clery Act, Congress appropriated $750,000 for the U.S. Department of Education to produce and disseminate a Jeanne Clery Act compliance handbook to all Title IV institutions that are eligible for funding.
 
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), one of the Clery Act’s original sponsors, introduced the provision, which was included in the omnibus appropriations package passed by both houses of Congress mid-February.
 
The NAICU later clarified in a letter to Congress that they "have never, and are not now, calling for this law to be weakened or eliminated." "We are asking that its reporting provisions be examined to make campus crime information more useful to students and their families," wrote David Warren the President of NAICU. An examination of some of the Clery Act's provisions remains likely.
 
Originally known as the “Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990", the Clery Act requires institutions of postsecondary education that participate in federal student aid programs to report campus crime statistics to their students, and the federal government. It is enforced by the U.S. Department of Education.
 
Over a decade later, the definition of crime still varies widely from campus to campus. For instance, on the campus of Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, unless a weapon is involved or an ambulance is called, the college's security department does not notify law enforcement, according to the school's Public Safety Director, Tom Kiniry. "It's the victim's responsibility and it's completely up to her," Kiniry said. "In some cases, she doesn't even want us to know." Three incidents of sex offenses went unreported to the county in 2001, according to gazette.net.
 
The Clery Act disclosure requirement has generated significant controversy over the past decade. Many believed that colleges were underreporting crime data. Those institutions that did comply felt they were being unfairly penalized, because incoming freshmen and parents perceived that their schools were more dangerous, as compared to schools that fudged their numbers.
 
A National Institute of Justice-funded study confirmed the suspicions of underreporting. The report, “Campus Sexual Assault: How America’s Institutions Respond,” found that only 36.5 percent of the nation's colleges and universities comply with the Clery Act. The study includes information collected from 2,438 colleges and universities in the United States and Puerto Rico.
 
According to S. Daniel Carter of the non-profit watchdog organization Security On Campus, Inc., the Clery Act handbook “will ensure that all schools have clear instructions on exactly how to report their campus crime, and will increase student safety. Schools will know exactly what the law requires of them, and dishonest schools will no longer be able to claim they were confused when they are caught underreporting their campus crime,” Carter said.
 
The "Clery Act" is named in memory of 19 year-old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room on April 5, 1986. Jeanne's parents, Connie and Howard, discovered that students hadn't been told about 38 violent crimes on the Lehigh campus in the three years before her murder.
 
Sources:

NAICU proposal, January 2003.

NAICU Statement of Support for the Jeanne Clery Act, February 7, 2003.
 
“Colleges don’t report sex assault stats,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, August 2002.
 
“Mount St. Mary’s does not report most crimes,” gazette.net, December 19, 2002.
 
For more information about the Jeanne Clery Act: http://www.securityoncampus.org/schools/cleryact/index.html
 
“Campus Sexual Assault: How America’s Institutions of Higher Education Respond”, National Institute of Justice, August 2002
     
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