Clery Act & Campus Security

¶ … federal government does not always get involved in law enforcement issues, but because it has the ability to do so on college campuses, it has. The federal government forces colleges and universities to report campus crimes because it has the ability to do so, and because it wants to be seen as doing everything that it can to provide a safe environment for people to study.

The federal government does not run campus policing, nor does it write local laws, so the act is mainly with respect to making information available to members of the public. Parents of students are usually voters, and it was their demands and outcry that led to the laws. The initial Campus Security Act, therefore, was a response to public and media pressure.

The activism stemmed from the Jeanne Clery case at Lehigh University, so in that sense there was no statistical basis for the initial Act; it was a response to pressure, and triggered by a single piece of anecdotal evidence. The parents who were pushing for the Act were motivated by fear for the safety of their children, many of whom would be moving away from home for the first time to attend university.

The Act makes it look like Congress is getting tough on crime, and responding to the needs of consituents, but my personal opinion is that there was no statistical basis for the Act's provisions. I suppose the underlying theory is that parents can make decisions about where to send their children based on crime statistics, and because of this many schools would not volunteer campus crime statistics. That's an interesting way to make a decision about higher education. As a journalist, however, such reporting will make it easier for me.

Most cities publish crime statistics, so that these can be tabulated. There are a number of stories that one can write to discuss crime and safety on campus. First, where the statistics are positive, those can be used to build a case that the campus is safe, or has relative safety compared with the surrounding areas, or against other competing schools. The use of hard numbers can be tied in with interviews about safety perceptions on campus, so that there can be a juxtaposition of perceptions and reality.

For example, Suffolk has a very safe campus. But if the perceptions of safety are misaligned with that, there might be a story about what goes into safety perceptions, for example if the lighting is poor that is something known to be associated with people feeling unsafe. There could be a discussion of some of the things that the school should look into to bring the perception of safety in line with the actual safety.

Another story that could be done is about what the campus administration is doing with respect to security. This is an interesting question, because on one hand there is no need to upgrade security, but it is something that people are interested to read about, and if the school is spending money on security it may wish to publish such initiatives. There are security issues, however, that are not covered by the database, such as online security issues.

Those are important to students who are always online, but get much less press. It is always worth.