The Clery Act:
Ensuring a Safe Environment for
Students and Employees

Thanks to new changes in federal law, Maricopa community colleges--along with most other colleges and universities throughout the country--will more aggressively publicize their efforts to ensure that students be able to learn in a safe environment.

For nearly ten years, postsecondary institutions that participate in federal financial aid programs have been required under the Campus Security Act to make available statistical information regarding certain types of crime occurring on their campuses.

Under recent amendments to that Act (which is now more commonly referred to as the Clery Act, after a Pennsylvania university student who was murdered in her dormitory room) institutions must now detail their safety-oriented policies and programs to both students and employees.

In compliance with the Clery Act mandates, each Maricopa college will publish and make available to students and employees an annual security report. Most prominently, the report will present:

• crime statistics for the three most recent calendar years regarding the occurrence on campus of specified offenses, including homicide, robbery, burglary, and aggravated assault, as well as both forcible and non-forcible sex crimes;
• campus policies regarding security, describing in particular the enforcement authority of college safety personnel, crime reporting procedures, and Maricopa's regulations on sale and use of alcoholic beverages; and
• programs aimed at informing students and employees about crime prevention, sexual assault, and alcohol abuse.

Additionally, federal law requires a college or university to provide its prospective students and employees a notice including a statement of the annual security report's availability, a "description of its contents," and how a copy of the report may be obtained.

The Clery Act does not directly mandate that postsecondary institutions offer the programs concerning crime prevention, sexual assault, and other subjects--merely that the institutions report such offerings. This reporting requirement, however, no doubt carries with it a strong implication that colleges and universities should indeed be making such programs available to their students.

Although the Act allows institutions to make their annual security reports available through various means, no doubt the most popular will be through an Internet posting on a school-sponsored Web site. As long as a college or university sufficiently advises its students and employees of how they may access the report on the Web, the Act's notice requirements are met.

This fall, each college's annual security report will be available to the Maricopa community. Links to the reports are provided for each campus.

Published in the Fall 2000 Edition of In Brief