PULLMAN – WSU Police Chief Bill Gardner says he literally has about five minutes after hearing of a reported crime to decide whether to issue a campus alert. If he decides the alleged incident meets the criteria of the federal Clery Act, he notifies WSU Emergency Management Coordinator Chris Tapfer, and alerts go out immediately to 23,000 WSU Pullman students and employees via text messages, voice messages, e-mails and pagers.
So far so good. But what happens next? At a brown-bag meeting this week to discuss the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, several students and staff said they are glad they receive timely warnings of possible danger, but they would like some “closure” when the danger has passed.
At the meeting, Gardner was joined by Chris Wuthrich, associate dean of students, and representatives from Counseling Services, Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center (GIESORC), Residence Life and the WSU News Service to answer questions about the Clery Act and why WSU officials can release some information and not other information.
Josh Hart, ASWSU director of student affairs, said it is frustrating to get a lot of information at the onset of an incident, but then to be told later, “this happened, but that’s all you can know.” In the absence of facts, he said, people fill in the gaps with rumor and hearsay.
In particular, Hart said, students are continuing to talk about the three reported assaults in late August that were later recanted. While the university issued press releases saying the reporting parties had recanted, the releases contained no information about who the reporting parties were or what sanctions they faced.
Wuthrich said WSU is legally prohibited from releasing personal information about students, including any information related to disciplinary actions, by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
If a crime is committed on campus and a student is arrested, that arrest is public information. But, he said, many crimes are reported that don’t necessarily result in an arrest. If a student is called before the Student Conduct Board, that information is confidential and cannot be reported. Even if the student is subsequently arrested and faces criminal charges, proceedings of the Student Conduct Board remain confidential.
Police Chief Gardner said there is tension between what WSU is mandated to report under the Clery Act and what it is prohibited from reporting under FERPA, and the problem is particularly acute when there is a false report.
Under the provisions of the Clery Act – first passed in 1990 and amended over the years, most recently in 2008 – campus officials “must immediately notify the campus community of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or staff occurring on campus.”
According to S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security on Campus, a nonprofit organization started by the Clery family in 1987, the emergency notification requirement was implemented in response to the shootings at Virginia Tech University in 2007 and similar crimes on other campuses. It covers anything from an active shooter to a tornado to a highly contagious disease, he said.
But, he said, the Clery Act has always required that “timely warnings” be issued if campus officials learn of specific “Clery Act crimes” that pose a “serious or continuing threat to students and employees.”
Homicide, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, motor vehicle theft, arson, burglary and hate crimes are specific “Clery Act crimes” that must be reported in a public crime log and, if the threat is ongoing and serious, trigger a campus community alert. Trying to determine within five minutes or a half hour whether the threat is serious and ongoing can be difficult, Gardner said, but the clock is ticking.
Carter, with Security on Campus, said he expects the U.S. Department of Education to issue regulations later this month that specify that emergency notifications be issued “without delay” unless a notification could harm potential victims or exacerbate the situation.
In the wake of the killings at Virginia Tech, he said, it is clear that institutions are expected to issue warnings “absolutely as quickly as possible once the basic facts are known to their officials.”
In the wake of the killings at Virginia Tech, he said, it is clear that institutions are expected to issue warnings “absolutely as quickly as possible once the basic facts are known to their officials.”
WSU is not alone in grappling with the requirements of the Clery Act, Gardner said. Some urban universities are issuing so many alerts that campus officials fear they might be blunting the effectiveness of the warnings. At this point that isn’t a concern at WSU, he said, but he does hope that the notifications can be a useful tool for students and others in the campus community, without causing undue fear or anxiety.
Brendan Niedermeyer, president of the Residence Hall Association, said students remain concerned about the reported assaults on campus because so many questions remain, including what happened to the students involved. He suggested that a public forum to explain the process for dealing with false reports might be helpful.
Cassandra Nichols, senior associate director of Counseling Services, said violations on campus can be handled in various ways, ranging from arrest and criminal proceedings to student conduct proceedings to counseling and therapeutic intervention. Discussing the options available in any particular case might violate student privacy laws, she said, “but I do like the idea of having something that discusses possible outcomes.”
Jill Griffin, chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, said she would like to see the university get the message out that there is a process in place to deal with students involved in high-profile incidents that might not result in an arrest.
Since WSU is mandated to report certain information and prohibited from reporting other information, she said, the public needs to be made aware of the law. The message might be, “We can’t give you any further information, but what we can tell you is that we have a process in place” and we haven’t simply dropped the issue or swept it under a rug.
