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Morning News

Clery Act Curtails Campus Crime Despite some Schools' Noncompliance

Aired October 24, 2000 - 9:20 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Safety is a major concern for parents sending their children off to college. A law that was passed a decade ago was designed to inform parents and students about crime on college campuses. But how well is it working now?

CNN "NEWSSTAND"'s David Mattingly looks at the law, the loopholes and the lingering grief of one family.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeanne was joy. Everybody loved Jeanne and she loved everybody.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Jeanne Clery left home for college in 1985, she was full of energy, promise and ambition.

HOWARD CLERY, FATHER: She was a good athlete, and a regular girl. The type of girl a father would enjoy.

MATTINGLY: And when Jeanne decided to attend Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, her parents were elated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's beautiful. I fell in love with it too, and it was only an hour and twenty minutes away.

MATTINGLY: But in April 1986, just eight months into the school year, Jeanne was found beaten, raped and murdered in her dorm room. The image of a peaceful and safe campus was shattered.

CLERY: Here's what they weren't saying. They had approximately 46 violent crimes or felonies the two years before Jeannie (ph) was murdered.

MATTINGLY: Did you know anything about this?

CLERY: No we knew nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing, we never even asked how safe is the campus.

MATTINGLY: The Clerys started a non-profit organization, called Security on Campus Incorporated and lobbied Congress for the passage of six federal campus crime laws. Their greatest success, the 1990 Jeanne Clery Act. The law required campuses, for the first time, to count not just crimes reported to campus police, but to administrators, rape crisis counselors and other sources as well.

But according to its supporters, it's a law that has been routinely broken. In the last seven years, the Department of Education has found 367 problems in the way colleges report statistics. One example: Moorhead State University in Minnesota reported just two assault cases in two years. But campus counseling centers counted as many as 35 sexual abuse cases and 23 aggravated assaults in just one year.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R), PENNSYLVANIA: They are not reporting crimes, for example, on rapes, if they are not reported to the security office and turned over to the FBI.

MATTINGLY: There's also been confusion over what crimes actually count as on-campus.

The University of Pennsylvania in urban Philadelphia, for example, reported just 18 of 204 campus robberies. The reason, a loophole in Clery Act that allowed schools to omit crimes on city streets and sidewalks.

TERRY HARTLE, AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION: The boundaries between off-campus and on-campus are not hard and fast, particularly in an urban environment.

MATTINGLY: The Clerys resent the lack of compliance by colleges and view them as attempts to protect school image. But today at Lehigh University, students enter dorms with electronic key cards and 70 emergency phones dot the campus. By the ten-year anniversary of Jeanne Clery's death, campus crime was down 49 percent. Still, the Clerys worry that campus crime information may still not reach some parents and students across the country in time.

(on camera): Would you feel safe sending a daughter off to college today?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With what I know? No, I'm sorry. Because I know the kids are still not locking their doors. She didn't look her door that night.

(voice-over): David Mattingly, CNN, "NEWSTAND."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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