THE CLERY ACT: Smart law enforcement or grieving parents gone awry?

So I was watching the Crime & Investigation Network on a lazy Saturday afternoon.  Do you know why I have a difficult time watching that channel?  It's because every one hour program is full of about thirty minutes of CSI advertisements or whichever new crime drama the network recently purchased syndication rights, and the channel is unapologetic about smothering a viewer with scenes of melodramatic crime dramas.  I have a HUGE problem with TV crime dramas.  They all feel the same, and ever since watching the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall and it's hilarious mock crime dramas, my suspicions have been validated and I doubt I'll ever watch one again.  And honestly... with so many documentaries channels on cable these days that feature true crime, why would you even bother with the phony drama?  You can see the real stuff, starting with gruesome forensic pictures all the way to the tearful interviews of those involved.  THAT's real drama, not watching the latest bulimiac Hollywood model act like she spent seven years in college and law school, or that typecast cop actor who if not for the bushy eyebrows, crooked nose and still prevalent Brooklyn accent just might have had a shot at replacing George Clooney.

CSI people acting like CSI people

But anyways, I'm watching this program and because I'm trapped in my pathetic pop culture life, I come to find out that in the last twenty years there has been a huge selfless push by two dedicated parents to improve campus security at our nation's universities.  You see, in 1986 their daughter was brutally murdered and raped in her own dormitory room on the campus of Lehigh University.  In maybe one of the biggest guilt trips ever given to a 19-year-old kid to live with, even though there were automatic locks on the dorm doors, three co-eds apparently propped the doors to their residence hall open with pizza boxes so other students could easily get inside.  Because of this, the perpetrator was easily able to sneak inside and commit the crime.  The defendant in question was a fellow student who had just lost his bid for class president by one vote and in one of the most obvious cases of anger and/or women issues, the losing political aspirant, drunk off his knockers, took it out on poor Jeanne Ann Clery.  The assailant said it was a botched robbery.  Yeah.... right.

So of course the parents sued the hell out of the university with attorneys who I'm sure were only too eager to get their paws on the awarded verdict.   Then they launched a crusade to change campus security which eventually amounted to the Clery Act which was signed in 1990 by our eldest Bush.   Did they improve training for police officers?  Launch education initiatives for students?  What exactly did they do?  Well, it's a mixed package.  Like most bills, it was full of different offerings, but the main purpose of this bill was to.... drumroll, please... force universities to release their crime statistics!   Huh?  Because knowing that a university had a few more violent crimes than the next neighboring campus somehow affects violent offenders?  Or because we all know that our nation's higher institutions of learning are breeding grounds for crime and violence, and potential students should avoid several of them at all costs.  Avoid the cafeteria, it's where the hardest gangs hang.

Connie & Howard Clery, some good people.

One fact about the victim and her parents should let you know where this stemmed from.  You see, when deciding on a college, Jeanne Clery originally looked at Tulane University, the alma mater of her two older brothers.  But because of one violent crime against a female student off-campus, her parents decided to send her instead to the safer Lehigh University.  Put two and two together, and you suddenly realize where the parental anger comes from.  Apparently, these parents thought that if their daughter's university had released the statistics about violent crime against students, a stat which was abnormally high from 1983 to 1985 at Lehigh University, they never would have sent her there, and thus, their daughter would still be alive today.   So this all sounds altruistic, and who really has the guts to argue against grieving parents, but was it worth a federal law, a huge bureaucracy, and who knows how many more tax dollars diverted to a single, albeit noble, mission?

Plaque outside of Jeanne Clery's former dormitory

The answer might be no.  Beware the grieving parent.  Have you seen the latest Batman movie?  One aspect of Batman's famous origin that I always felt was wrong was that the child takes in the cold-blooded murder of his parents and dedicates his life to a single cause, bypassing everything around him because he is so focused on the memory of this murder.  If Batman were a real life story, there would need to be one simple switch: The parents would have witnessed their son's murder. Why?  Have you seen how many parents spark national movements because of the tragic death of their child?  John Walsh and America's Most Wanted, the story of the AMBER Alert, and so on.  Look... the murder of anyone is a sad incident, and no parent ever wants to outlive their child, but you know what?  It happens.  This is a dangerous world we live in.  Random acts of violence do occur.  If something happens to someone you love and you find out that the security measures that you thought were in place were negligent, then by all means -- sue their butts off!   But if you're going to enact a law and spend thousands of man hours and millions of dollars, please make sure that it's responsible and honest, and not another method to vent your grief or anger because any politician with half a brain knows it's good politics to support a cause like this and political suicide to publicly question its merits.

The real Batman

Want some cold hard facts?  Check out this 2002 study about the initial effects of the Clery Act.  The study privately interviewed almost a thousand senior law enforcement officials in various universities and found these numbers:

• 43% said the Act was a stimulus to improve the quality of campus law enforcement procedures
• 45% said the Act was a stimulus to improve the quality of campus law enforcement policies
• 57% said it improved the quality of reporting procedures
• 88% said they made crime reports public that did not affect pending investigations

Okay, you can see some results.   Almost half of the college police institutions believe it acted as a stimulus to improve their on-campus security.  That's a good thing.  It did its job.  The half in which it didn't improve matters?  Maybe those colleges already had a good grasp on student security?   Who knows?  In the defense of our academic law enforcement forces, the timing of this bill also probably coincided with the realization that it just wasn't a safe place anymore, even for our students.  Think of all the changes in schools at all levels since 1986.   High school students have metal detectors and clear backpacks even at fairly safe schools.  The Virginia Tech shooting or Columbine couldn't even be imagined in the mid-80's.  As a nation, we were just starting to deal with those types of tragic events occurring annually.   The school shooter at the University of Texas was a distant memory and the exception.  Watch any movie from that period about high school or college life and you'll see a country that had no idea what type of brutal reality was about to hit.  As a matter of fact, campus police really didn't start appearing until the late 1960's and it was a reaction towards Kent State and student protests more than it was crime. 

Early campus police forces (University of Kentucky).  Do you think these guys knew how bad it would get?

Going back to the study though, there are three questions that stand out:

1. Since the passage of the Act, has the campus crime rate changed? 15% said it increased, 15% said it decreased, and 70% said it remained about the same.
2. Can any change in the crime rate on your campus be credit to the Act and its requirements?  10% said yes, but an overwhelming 90% said no. 
3. Has the act been effective in increasing the number of campus safety programs? 73% said no.

So yeah, it basically did its job for the parents of Jeanne Clery who wanted more public information about campus crime.  It pushed the slackers who weren't reporting crimes into a higher gear and increased awareness with campus police forces across the country.  But it didn't help stop crime.  It essentially gave scared parents an excuse not to send their children away to certain colleges. Want to know if your university is safe?  I have a simple litmus test.  Is your school located downtown?  If it is, you're probably in more danger of random crimes than your counterpart on that nice secluded rural property.  Many universities were built decades or even centuries ago and the founders had no idea what type of cesspool the local community would be in the distant future. Look at the "top 50 most dangerous colleges in 2010" and you'll notice a trend with a majority of the dubious nominees.  They're older institutions founded on the Eastern seaboard or in the Great Lakes regions which are now surrounded by tougher neighborhoods, and there's also a large number of historically black universities which are sometimes now planted smack dab in the middle of some of our nation's tougher inner-city neighborhoods.  But even with these numbers, nothing can be taken for face value.  Schools have been getting in trouble every year since the passage of the Clery Act when they fudge their numbers such as not reporting off-campus incidents or having different definitions of the word "assault."  And then there's the elephant in the room which is sexual assault.  An alarming number of women in colleges everywhere face this problem which has a history of being covered up or not reported at all.   If you're a concerned parent, you don't need statistics to tell you what to do.  Drive around the neighborhood and check it out.  Duh!  But most importantly, pray that you've taught your child enough common sense to live a safe and productive young adult life.  Young women don't need to get smashed and hang out in private rooms in the fraternity house, nor do they need to walk around campus after midnight without a partner. All students should lock their doors no matter how safe they feel.  Any college student should be aware that when they parade around with a laptop, an Ipod and the other valuable accessories they perhaps took for granted in their safer home environments are now a target for roaming thieves.  College life is just like any other normal adult life.  It's time to grow up and realize the world can sometimes be a harsh and unforgiving place.

Welcome to life, kid!  It sometimes sucks.

So in conclusion, was the Clery Act needed?  Many people would probably argue it was needed because too many colleges swept embarrassing incidents of violence and crime under the rug and this bill forced them to admit what was truly happening... at least on-campus.  Off-campus is another story.  Would universities eventually have modernized, expanded and improved their police forces even without the Clery Act?  Probably.  Violence at all academic institutions is a sad trend of the new century.  One big lawsuit is really all it takes for people to take notice and god bless their hearts, once the precedent is set, the lawyers and insurance companies quickly react.  I'm not going to throw out an ultimatum on whether or not the Clery Act was productive, but it was a feel good cause.  There's also always the argument that free information is NEVER a bad thing to have in a democracy.  My point is that the term "random acts of violence" was coined for a reason.  In this insane country we live in, believe it or not, YOU or someone you love may be the random victim.  It's easy for me or anyone else to say this when it hasn't happened to us, but then again, this same complacency is probably what helps launch grieving parents to monumental crusades.  At one time, they might have been the insensitive jerk who didn't think it could happen to them and never gave any of these causes the time of day.  Like everything in our nation from counter-terrorist initiatives, to environmental disasters, to natural disaster preparation, when the game changer happened, we reacted swiftly in our policy changes. Your mission in life is if you are the unfortunate victim of these unavoidable tragedies that often drive even the survivors to an early grave, you must somehow act rationally and ask yourself if the proper precautions were in place or if you were the unfortunate victim of a tragic act that was going to happen to someone, and will happen again.  How much is too much?  How much of the future can you really change? That sounds insensitive but it's the truth.  When your opponent shows a flush and takes a large stack of your chips, don't panic and start throwing out extreme bets to save the game.  Sometimes, life happens and takes your chips away.