Lawmakers could be putting students’ safety at risk as they prepare to reform how colleges and universities report campus crime.
U.S. Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., is leading the group Fed. UP a coalition of 3,100 universities and institutions that want to reform the 800-page Higher Education Act.
The congressman’s effort, thankfully, is meeting opposition from campus safety activists, such as the group Security on Campus Inc.
Howard Clery, executive director of the group - founded after sister Jeanne Clery was murdered at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania - believes proposed changes to the act will make it easier for colleges to hedge on reporting crimes on campus. The federal law includes the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
Some colleges already fail to report crime information required under the Clery guidelines.
The proposed changes are intended to clarify standards for crime reporting and interpretation of the law. Even the U.S. Education Department has had trouble interpreting the law, and has been known to dispense incorrect advice to institutions.
But not all campuses have problems reporting crime data, leading to questions about the need to rewrite the entire law. MSU’s Department of Police and Public Safety was one of 400 institutions reporting crime statistics to the Uniform Crime Report before campuses were required to do so as part of the Clery act. Police here report few problems with the law.
If the Clery act is revised, lawmakers must be careful any changes only clarify language and improve reporting procedures to make the law more understandable. It is imperative this law not be watered down.
Students and parents need to know about crimes on campus so they can make informed decisions about how to stay safe. Informing students about illegal activity is one of the best ways to prevent it.
But even on this campus, where officials post crime statistics on the Web and alert students of potential dangers, more can be done. Too often, situations can get swept under the rug if they aren’t blatantly violent and extremely hazardous to other students’ safety.
On a college campus, many criminal violations may be referred to the university’s judiciary rather than through traditional court systems. But campus judiciary hearings - and most judiciary records - are not publicized or kept open to the public because they’re considered part of a student’s academic record and must be kept private under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Rather than focusing on the Clery act, which ensures crimes be reported, lawmakers would be better suited to examine laws that keep crimes from the public.
It reflects poorly on a university to keep any information involving crime hidden, and some day, it may even prove to be deadly.
This sort of information must be made and kept available, before another student is remembered not for their deeds and personality, but instead for the law named after them.
