In 1986, Jeanne Clery was brutally raped and murdered at her dorm. She was a freshman at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. She and her parents had looked over the campus and were excited for her to go. Unfortunately, April 5 tragedy struck. Crime logs and reports did not exist then. If they had, the Clerys would have known that there had been 38 similar instances in the previous three years.
This tragic event sparked a new legislature, The Clery Act. Campuses have been required to post their crime stats since 1990, so students and parents can know the potential risks on campus.
“The law’s goal is to ensure that students, parents, employees and prospective students have access to accurate information about campus security and crime,” Lindsey Bracken, Clery Act compliance officer at Utah Tech University, said.
Crimes reported to various institutions, such as Title IX and the Utah Tech Police Department, are documented on the 60-day crime report and the yearly Clery crime reports, which have data from the last three years. The yearly report will be released Oct. 1. The reports can be accessed on the campus police website.
“It is almost like a buyer’s disclosure. When parents are sending their children off to a university, it’s a way for them to see what type of criminal conduct has occurred around the institution,” Hazel Sainsbury, director of equity compliance and Title IX coordinator, said.
Crimes reported include:
- Criminal offenses (murder, rape, robbery, arson, etc)
- Hate crimes (larceny-theft, simple assault, intimidation, and destruction or vandalism of property)
- Violence against women or VAWA (domestic violence, dating violence, stalking and sexual assault)
- Arrests and referrals for disciplinary action (possession of weapons, law violations, drug abuse violations and liquor law violations)
“We are a very safe campus. We’re in a conservative area. We don’t have a lot of murders or anything,” Bracken said.
Utah Tech staff and institutions work together to create a safe environment for students.
“Every week we meet together. It’s called the Care Team. We meet and we talk about concerns or incidents that happened,” Wes LiCalzi, chief of UTPD and director of public safety, said.
Bracken, UTPD and Title IX are the three institutions and individuals that are heavily involved in student safety. They work together to put together crime statistics and provide resources to students.
“We all work together to be more transparent about the conduct that is happening on our campus, making sure that our students are aware, but also doing everything we can in terms of preventative measures and safety planning to make sure our students… faculty [and] staff are safe,” Sainsbury said.
Title IX receives information from students on sexual crimes and reports it to Bracken. The names and details remain confidential, but the number is recorded. Title IX then finds resources to help these students whether its reassigning classes and dorms or providing a police escort to classes.
“We play a pivotal role because usually we are the ones who received the first information of the crime,” LiCalzi said.
UTPD reports incidents to Bracken. Then, they investigate and do what they can to find help for the students, whether they want to press charges or not. They also have a victim advocate on staff that helps students find the resources they need.
Bracken then compiles all the data from the police and Title IX into the reports seen on the website. If a crime becomes a trend, she’ll send warnings to the students.
“We send notices to your phones saying something’s going on. It’s a warning that comes from things reported to us,” Bracken said.
In order for the Clery Act to be successful, students need to report incidences on campus.
“Let’s say something happens to a roommate, and you report it and keep the roommate confidential. We get the report saying this incident has happened on campus. We might have had four other reports before that saying this has happened,” Bracken said. “This tells us we need to send out a warning out to all of our students saying someone on campus is doing this so they can be aware.”
There are several ways to report an incident, including the incident reporting form. The form is an easy way to report an incident without talking to anyone. The form can also be found on the campus police website under records and forms and the Title IX website.
Students can also call the UTPD on the phone numbers listed on the back of their ID or contact Sainsbury or Bracken. There are also several staff members that are campus security authorities that know what to do when an incident is reported to them.
Bracken said, “Sometimes it’s the one person that can save a lot of other people from going through an incident, just by reporting.”
