August is often a time for reflection and preparation in higher education. With summer plans drawing to a close and a new academic year beginning, it makes sense to use August to wrap up projects or engage in staff professional development and training in preparation for the arrival of a new class of students. No matter the schedule at your institution (semesters, quarters, or trimesters) August marks a time of one season ending as another begins.

A common task during this month is checking in on your progress developing the current year’s annual security report or ASR. As the report is due October 1st, August is a great a time to start or continue making revisions, edits, and changes to this dynamic document.

Remember algebra class in high school, when you had to show step by step how you got your answer? The action of revisiting and publishing an annual security report each year provides a built-in mechanism for college campuses to essentially do the same thing and “check your work.” Do your policies reflect your actual procedures on campus? Do your policies align with Clery Act requirements?

Further, the ASR outlines an institution’s philosophy and approach to addressing various campus safety issues. Each year then, it is helpful to go through the exercise of reading over the ASR from the previous year and seeing what, if anything, needs to be updated, changed, or revised.

The relationship between the ASR and Clery Act compliance is often lost or misunderstood: the ASR is the glue that holds the work together. The ASR is not separate and distinct from the everyday actions that take place on a college campus; in fact, it should be a mirror fully reflecting all of those elements accurately.

August, therefore, becomes an ideal time to pause and check in with that document and see whether it accurately captures the work that is taking place today on campus safety and whether or not those actions are grounded in policy and are aligned with Clery Act requirements.

Through our analysis of annual security reports for member organizations, Clery Center documents trends we see in the challenges campuses face when constructing their policy statements. Here are a few tips we suggest when refreshing your institution’s ASR this year:

• Ensure that primary prevention programs and awareness campaigns related to dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking are offered to all incoming and current students and employees and that such work is grounded in institutional policy.
• Make sure policy statements for timely warnings and emergency notifications are separate and distinct, even if they share the same messaging system for disseminating alerts. The circumstances for issuing each type of alert are different so represent that clearly within your ASR.
• If cross-referencing to materials used to comply with the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, which is permissible, when describing the drug and alcohol abuse prevention program (DAAPP) at your institution, double check that what is being cross-referenced is an accurate, up to date document that includes a description of:
  • Institutional policy on drug and alcohol use (for students and employees)
  • Institutional sanctions for violations of such policies
  • Local, state, federal laws on drug and alcohol possession, use, sale
  • Legal sanctions or implications for violations of such laws
  • Information about on and off campus services addressing drug and alcohol abuse and prevention programs for students and employees

We know from experience that working on the ASR piecemeal is more advantageous than rushing to complete it near the deadline, so we hope these tips provide a helpful guide for where to start. Enjoy some of those last summer evenings – September will be here before you know it!