College Safety Bill Headed to U.S. Congress
Jeanne Clery was 19 years old when she was raped and murdered in her college dormitory at Lehigh University. Her parents, Connie and Howard Clery, could not have known the danger she was in; standards for campus crime reporting simply did not exist in 1986. The Clery’s channeled their unfathomable grief into real change by creating and passing the Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to report campus crime data and publicly outline policies and procedures they have put into place to improve campus safety. Each campus compiles their data into an accessible Security Report.
But what about accidents that occur on campus that cause serious injury and even fatalities? Surely those are counted, right? Sadly, no. When our son Clark fell from a loft bed, sound asleep, in January of 2015 I soon realized through exhaustive research that there are thousands of bunk bed falls every year that are serious enough to report to the ER, but colleges don’t have to add it to their Clery reporting. Heck, they don’t even have to tell anyone it happened. But it did. And continues to happen. In fact, according to a study by the American College Health Association (ACHA) on student mortality published by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2013, accidents account for 10.8% of student death, where death due to crime is 0.53%. By applying this data, it follows that college students are 20 times more likely to die from an accident than from a crime.
In 2019, my late colleague Nanette Hausman (college911.net) and I formed the College Safety Coalition and linked arms with 4 other parents whose children had died from preventable accidents at college. When we first met, Nanette was formulating a bill in her home state of Connecticut named the COREY College Safety Act; named for her son Corey who died on campus just 15 days into his freshman year. Corey’s was the THIRD death in those first two weeks of the fall semester. Like Connie and Howard Clery, Nanette and Joel Hausman channeled their grief into actionable change in the state of Connecticut and inspired the College Safety Coalition to set its sights on a federal bill to change the face of college safety.
The COREY College Safety Act will be introduced on the floor on the Senate in July 2023 before the session goes into recess. It is our hope that this bill will pass not only because it’s common sense legislation but also because it will protect our present and future college students by harvesting data that has long gone unreported. Data that will show that we have a long way to go in making our college campuses safer for our future leaders and our most valuable asset; our children.