The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("the Clery Act") requires all institutions of higher education to provide a timely and accurate accounting of the number of incidents of student-on-student crime that occur on or near campus. The rash of Title IX and Clery filings in 2013 and 2014 suggest that schools prefer to pretend that assaults are not occurring in plague numbers on their campuses. To obfuscate the real statistics, administrators and safety officers can employ a variety of tactics:
(a) discouraging reporting,
(b) inaccurately categorizing violent assaults as lesser incidents to minimize assaults counted in annual statistics, and
(c) ultimately dismissing valid claims despite the existence of evidence or witness testimony,
All of these behaviors violate the federal requirements imposed on colleges and university's by the Clery Act. If documented, the federal government can step in and evaluate a campus' records of reported crimes, and impose monetary sanctions if mislabeled or unreported violations are discovered.
A sample complaint based on a format used by filers at Occidental College and the University of Southern California will be available in PDF format soon.
(a) discouraging reporting,
(b) inaccurately categorizing violent assaults as lesser incidents to minimize assaults counted in annual statistics, and
(c) ultimately dismissing valid claims despite the existence of evidence or witness testimony,
All of these behaviors violate the federal requirements imposed on colleges and university's by the Clery Act. If documented, the federal government can step in and evaluate a campus' records of reported crimes, and impose monetary sanctions if mislabeled or unreported violations are discovered.
A sample complaint based on a format used by filers at Occidental College and the University of Southern California will be available in PDF format soon.
