Colleges and universities nationwide now have to immediately notify their students, staff and faculty about emergencies on campus.

The new procedure is one of many aspects that are now required by law because of the Clery Act. The Clery Act is a federal law that requires public and a majority of private colleges to report crimes on their campuses to the Department of Education for purposes of publishing.

The Clery Act is named for 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery, who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room in 1986. Her parents discovered later that the university did not tell students about other violent crimes that had occurred on campus in previous years.

President Bush signed an amendment to the Clery Act in early August.

Kenneth Davidson, vice president of legal services and NIU’s general counsel, said the amendments put more responsibility on universities.

“Institutions have a new responsibility in publicizing their emergency responses and testing them,” Davidson said.

Testing emergency responses are also now required by the amendments. Davidson said he was impressed by their addition.

“This is the first time it had been a component of law,” Davidson said. “Testing out emergency responses has always been a good risk manangement procedure, but never a component of law.”
University Police Chief Donald Grady said the University Police (UP) already does emergency exercises.

“We are constantly testing our emergency response to make sure they work,” Grady said.
Grady said the UP does regular exercises with the DeKalb Fire Department and Convocation Center security for “all hazardous-type” emergencies.

The amendments also require colleges to report additional statistics on property-related crimes, including theft and larceny. Davidson said this is a notable change, as they had only reported high felony and personal injury crimes.

Grady described this change as a minor modification.

“We keep those statistics anyway so it is not a problem for us,” Grady said.

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