Students will soon be able to point and click their way to crime on MSU’s campus.The Department of Police and Public Safety is working on linking the daily crime log to its Web site, police.msu.edu. The log will tell Web surfers when and where a crime took place, MSU police Capt. Dave Trexler said.The system is running within the department, but Trexler said officials are looking for ways to make information more accessible to students.“We are trying to do everything we can to make our community aware of what’s happening,” Trexler said. “When people know what’s going on around them they will take more measures to protect themselves.”The University of Michigan’s Department of Public Safety has had its crime log online since 1999, spokeswoman Diane Brown said.“For those people who are interested in seeing what happens, it is easily accessible,” she said. “It also shows that there is a willingness to share with the community what crimes happen.”Close to 90 percent of the hits on the crime log come from the university - many are students, she said.Campus police departments have had to make information more accessible to students since the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act was passed by Congress in 1990.The law is named for 19-year-old freshman Jeanne Clery of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, who was raped and murdered by a fellow student in her residence hall room in 1986.Clery’s parents learned at her murder trial that 38 violent crimes were committed on Lehigh’s campus. The Clerys, along with other campus crime victims, persuaded Congress to enact the law.Howard Clery, Jeanne Clery’s brother and executive director of Security on Campus Inc., a Pennsylvania-based crime prevention group, said putting a crime log online is a good way of providing information to students.Clery also said the online crime log could act as a crime deterrent.“If they know the school doesn’t put up with that behavior and there’s a good chance they’ll get caught, they’ll say they don’t want to (commit a crime),” he said. “It also tells students what happened this time of day and the location. With this, they can try to avoid becoming a victim of crime.” English senior Meghan Garis hopes the online crime log will reduce campus crime.“It shows people on campus what to be aware of,” she said. “If I hear that laptops are getting stolen at the library, I’m not going to bring mine there. It makes you more careful.”Staff writer Mark Hicks contributed to this report.Shannon Murphy can be reached murphy78@msu.edu.