A New Name in College Safety
What’s in a name? In the case of renaming the Jeanne Clery Act, a name change could be a huge difference maker. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the Jeanne Clery Act was initiated by Howard and Connie Clery back in 1986 after their daughter, Jeanne, was raped and murdered in her college dormitory. For the first time in our country’s history, educators, families, and legislators were able to have an open dialogue about campus safety. The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to record and report their crimes and fires in their Campus Security Report, which will now be called the Campus Safety Report.
On December 23, 2024 the Jeanne Clery Act became the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act, signifying a seismic shift in how we now view campus safety in higher education. Be sure to check out this article by S. Daniel Carter (Safer Campuses, LLC) that appeared this past month in Campus Safety magazine.
Mr. Carter has been instrumental in getting our COREY Safety Act introduced into both the US House and the US Senate in the summer of 2023, just months after Nanette Hausman, co-founder of the College Safety Coalition (CSC), passed away after a brief battle with cancer. But Nanette’s mission is very much alive and remains with all of us on the CSC as we seek to bring the COREY Safety Act forth and make it the law of the land. COREY will seek to expand the scope of Clery by counting and recording incidents that occur on campus that result in serious injury in death. By doing so, we will finally have a national data set that will enable our colleges to identify safety gaps and patterns of injury that will ultimately result in our campuses being a safe place for students to thrive and reach their highest potential.
Links:
https://railagainstthedanger.org/college-safety-bill-headed-to-u-s-congress/