Campus Safety and Security Acts

Prior to 1990, many college and university administrators did not report information about incidents of crime and violence that occurred on their campuses since there was no enforced mandate to report such occurrences. This changed in 1990, when Congress enacted the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act (Pub. L. No. 101-542, 104 Stat. 2385) as an amendment to the Student Consumer Information Act of 1976.

This legislation was promulgated after years of lobbying by the Clery family (whose daughter had been murdered on a college campus in Pennsylvania in 1986), campus law enforcement officials, and others who had been affected by, or who were concerned about, the rise in crime on the campuses of higher education institutions. The act was amended in 1992 to require that schools give victims specific basic rights (The Sexual Assault Victim's Bill of Rights) and again in 1998 (The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act), which mandated reporting obligations regarding sexual assault. The act forced higher education officials to design and implement more effective security and anticrime policies, strategies, and practices and to monitor as well as report on campus crime patterns and trends.

The Student Consumer Information Act is a section of Title IV (student financial aid) of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Thus, the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, 1992, and 1998 applies to all postsecondary institutions that receive student financial assistance under Title IV or who participate in federal student aid programs, including Pell Grants, Perkins Loans, and Work Study funds.

The Right to Know and Campus Security Act requires that participating institutions disclose their security policies, crime prevention and sexual-assault awareness and response programs, and crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education upon request and to the public (including current students, employees, and, if requested, applicants for enrollment or employment). The act also provides that institutional reports include crime incidents for off-campus offenses, such as when recognized student organizations are not housed on an institution's grounds or are housed in off-campus facilities. However, this act does not mandate the reporting of minor offenses such as petty larceny crimes. Furthermore, such factors as the misreporting and underreporting of crimes and plea bargaining may skew reporting agencies' data.

Additionally, there are serious flaws in how colleges and universities classify and investigate crime. These issues are compounded by the lack of uniformity in [Page 574]how institutions educate and train their students and staff about what constitutes a crime and crime reporting procedures. As such, accurately measuring the amount of crime and determining the types of crime on college and university campuses is problematic.

Few public or private institutions are exempt from the requirements of the Campus Security Act. The Campus Security Act is a protective policy law that mandates that institutions receiving Title IV student aid funds must collect, report, and disseminate, to the campus community, policy information (including enforcement policies and crime prevention programs) about campus crime in a comprehensive yearly report. The statistics on campus crime must also be provided for the three calendar years prior to the year in which the report is disclosed. Participating colleges and universities must provide statistics in certain crime categories—murder, forcible and nonforcible sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. Also, statistics for certain arrests are mandated, including liquor law violations, drug abuse violations, and weapons possession offenses. However, not every occurrence of one of these crimes needs to be reported. The regulations specify that “while the notice should be timely in order to put students and employees on notice and prevent similar crimes from occurring, it need only be given if campus authorities consider the particular crime to represent a threat to students and employees.” This law also regulates certain aspects of campus disciplinary hearings and rules of procedure for the adjudication of sex offense allegations.

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