It can be difficult for parents to send their children off to college after raising them for 18 years — from helping their loved ones pack up their belongings, to dropping them off in a whole new city to live on their own. 
Nobody knows that apprehensive feeling better than the parents of Jeanne Ann Clery.
A map of campus outlining what areas are reported on under the Clery Act.
When Clery’s parents dropped her off at Lehigh University after spring break of her freshman year in 1986, it would be the last time they ever saw their daughter. Five days later, Clery was brutally raped and murdered in her campus dorm room, said Abigail Boyer, the assistant executive director of programs, outreach and communications for the Clery Center.
“Tragedies like what happened to Jeanne should not occur on college campuses,” Boyer said. “Actually, they should not happen anywhere. But, through the Clery Act, we have the tools necessary to try to prevent these kinds of atrocities from happening and to inform the public when they regrettably do.”
According to the Student Press Law Center, the 1990 Crime Awareness and Campus Safety Act — renamed to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act in 1998 — requires colleges and universities to make information about criminal activity on campuses readily available to the public.
Implementation at UI
At the University of Idaho, the Clery Act is implemented through Security Services, which publishes an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report on Oct. 1 to carry out the requirements outlined in the Clery Act.
Director of Emergency Management and Security Services Patrice McDaniel said the government-mandated report illustrates how safe and secure UI is to anyone interested in knowing.
“The Clery Act is basically a federal regulation and it comes down from the Department of Education,” McDaniel said. “It requires colleges and universities that receive Title IV funding to basically distribute their security numbers for crimes on their campuses to any existing students and staff or potential students and staff — so they have an idea of how safe their campus is.”
McDaniel said the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report includes crime statistics in compliance with the Clery Act that align with FBI Uniform Crime Report definitions, which is a standard in the field of reporting criminal activity.
“Murder, non-negligent manslaughter and negligent manslaughter, the sex offenses — forcible and non-forcible — robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson,” McDaniel said. “Those are the ones that are the FBI Uniform Crime Report — they call it UCR — definitions.”
The 2013 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report for the University of Idaho included three forcible sex offenses, one aggravated assault and 10 burglaries that took place on the Moscow campus during the 2012 calendar year.
Coordinator of Violence Prevention Programs Virginia Solan said she was surprised to hear that only three sexual assaults were reported in 2012, because she believes more people are being sexually assaulted, but not speaking up.
“They’re not reporting it,” Solan said. “That’s the case because there are most likely more than only three sexual assaults that happened on campus last year. I wish people would report more, but the only way that is going to happen is if we keep doing programs that encourage people to speak out against sexual violence, like Take Back the Night.”
McDaniel said other crime statistics included in the report are based on state and local laws such as liquor, drug and weapon offenses. In 2012, the crime with the most offenses was violation of state liquor laws, and consequently referral to the Dean of Students Office for disciplinary action.
Clery Act jurisdiction
The most complex portion of the Clery Act defines the boundaries of a university campus so the report accurately reports what crimes occur on campus, off campus and on public property, Clery Compliance Coordinator Lauri Koster said.
“We have a map and it’s shaded in different colors and it helps to explain it because some campuses are really easy, but the way that the real estate is here makes it a little more complex,” Koster said.
McDaniel said UI boundaries encompass a large area including the geographical campus and every sidewalk, street and sidewalk across said street that outlines campus.
“For example, if you’re at the soccer field, that’s still a part of the campus,” McDaniel said. “If you cross over the street and you’re in the middle of the road and something happens — somebody assaults you in the middle of the road — that’s still campus property, even if you cross the street and you’re on that next sidewalk. But once you step off that sidewalk and you’re over at the Stinker Store, then you’re on off-campus property and we don’t report it.”
McDaniel said on-campus property refers to any area on campus that the university uses its resources to maintain — including all campus land, buildings, structures and university-owned property.
The other classification of reporting is “non-campus” property, which isn’t interpreted the way it sounds, Koster said. Non-campus property refers to buildings and structures geographically located on campus but owned by an outside entity — including some Greek houses.
“Such as the Steel House, that is ran separately and the property is owned by somebody else,” Koster said. “It’s not controlled by us, so we don’t have a say in what’s happening there. But because it is on campus, we consider it non-campus property and report it because it’s within our boundary.”
The third classification of reporting falls under public property. Koster said public property refers to areas in and directly adjacent to campus that are owned by the city, such as streets that run through campus but are maintained by city workers as opposed to UI facilities services.
“Sixth Street is a city street and it goes right through our campus, so anything that happened there would be reported as public property,” Koster said. “So it changes the geography and how you report if something happens in the street.”
UI leaders interpret the Clery Act
If figuring out the reporting aspect of the Clery Act wasn’t enough, Koster said there is still more to the law than that.
“Part of the Clery Act too is to publish the policies and different activities that we have on campus to try to make it a safer campus,” Koster said.
Programs reported in the 2013 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report are Vandal Alert — a mass communication system mandated by the government following the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Green Dot, the ‘I Got Your Back’ campaign and Take Back the Night.
“I’m very involved with each of the programs,” McDaniel said. “Student participation in these programs yields much lower crime activity and makes reporting the crimes via the Clery Act much simpler.”
But McDaniel said the Clery Act isn’t perfect, and new changes will be implemented in the next report that encompasses a greater perception of safety on college campuses.
“Coming up for the new reports that are going to be released in 2014, they’ve added some more definitions that will be included that weren’t included in this report,” McDaniel said. “That will include domestic violence, dating violence, stalking — so those are some more that will be added in the future.”
Associate Dean of Students Craig Chatriand said while the Clery Act serves its purpose in reporting campus crime, it doesn’t take a holistic approach to reporting incidents and crimes that affect the entire student population.
“A lot of it happens off campus,” Chatriand said. “It happens on camping trips, it happens at date dashes, it happens at off-campus parties and sometimes it will happen in a residence hall or a Greek house. The Clery Act — some of those boundaries are just geographic boundaries — so when you ask if it’s accurate for on campus, it’s closer to accurate. But, it’s not reflective of our students’ overall experience.”
Amber Emery can be reached at [email protected]