U.S. Department of Education Announces Rescission of and Replacement for the 2016 Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting
This afternoon, Secretary Betsy DeVos announced the rescission of and replacement for the 2016 Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting (Handbook), the most recent Clery Act subregulatory guidance. The Department determined that “much of the guidance provided was outside of the scope of the relevant statutory (20 U.S.C. 1092) and regulatory (34 CFR 668.41 and 668.46) authority.”
The announcement also provided an overview of a new Clery-related Appendix of the Federal Student Aid Handbook and any significant changes between the 2016 Handbook and the new appendix. These changes primarily impact Clery Act geography and campus security authorities, providing less direction on how institutions should interpret the regulatory requirements related to public property and noncampus geography as well as who is required to report under the Clery Act. They also direct institutions directly to the regulations for definitions of Clery Act crimes.
As with all federal higher education regulations, institutions are in the position of needing to interpret and apply regulations based on their own unique campus environments. In our experience, many of the sections of the 2016 Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting spoke to areas where institutions were continually reaching out to the Department for more clarity and guidance to inform their own application, and provided better insight and examples as to what the regulations can look like in practice.
No guidance is perfect — we have, in fact, advocated for certain changes to the Handbook to address areas of overcomplication or confusion for institutions; however, we do not anticipate that there will be fewer questions with the rescission of this guidance altogether. The Department just has one less resource available to help answer these persistent questions.
The announcement notes that while the Department will not advise institutions to rely upon it, the 2016 Handbook will be archived on the Department’s website and will continue to be referenced in program review reports for applicable calendar years. While no longer subregulatory guidance, we encourage institutions to continue to reference the Handbook, to better understand existing promising practices and effective approaches to implementation. As always, Clery Center will continue to support you by providing training and technical assistance as you determine how to apply Clery Act regulations on your campus and, most importantly, make the decisions that best support your campus community.
You can find the Appendix of the Federal Student Aid Handbook here.
October 22, 2020
FAQs on the Rescission of the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting
Since the Department of Education’s rescission of the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting on October 9, 2020, we have received numerous questions and concerns from campus safety administrators trying to navigate the loss of this guide. Below is a brief summary (in text and video formats!) of some of the most frequently asked questions we have received and our responses to them.
Q: With the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting rescinded, what do we use to know how to comply with the Clery Act?
A: The short answer is to use the Clery Act statute and regulations themselves. The Department of Education’s actions last week reinforced that anything beyond the statute and regulations is not legally binding — which was always the case with the Handbook, a sub-regulatory guidance document.
The Appendix replacing the Handbook predominantly reiterates statutory and regulatory language and offers minimal guidance on CSAs, Clery geography, and Clery crimes, but is also not legally binding.
Q: The Appendix seems vague on how to enact Clery Act requirements. What are we supposed to do now?
A: In an effort to scale back what the Department of Education called “expansive overreach” in the Handbook, the Appendix stresses campuses have the latitude to make determinations for more ambiguous parts of the law. For example, in rescinding the Handbook, the Department has eliminated guidance on which list of roles at an institution the Department would consider to be CSAs. The Appendix states the Department will defer to an institution’s designation of CSAs and provide technical assistance for areas where there are questions but does not provide any examples of roles it would consider to be CSAs.
Additionally, the definition of “reasonably contiguous” included in the 2016 Handbook is no longer considered guidance upon which campuses should rely. Instead, campuses should make their own determinations about what is and is not considered reasonably contiguous for the purposes of counting on-campus geography.
An institution’s internal policies and protocols for how they interpret and consistently apply the regulations will be even more important than ever without the Handbook to help provide context on how ED interprets them.
Q: Should we be making changes to who is considered a campus security authority (CSA) at our institution?
A: It depends. While the Appendix does not offer examples of who the Department would consider to be a CSA, CSAs are still defined in the regulations and therefore an institution should document and be able to articulate who they determined to be CSAs as aligned with that definition. Therefore, if someone who used to be considered a CSA because they met the definition of “officials with significant responsibility for student and campus activities” as that phrase was described within the Handbook is no longer considered to be a CSA by the institution, they should be prepared to describe why the function of that role, in their interpretation, no longer meets the definition.
Q: Are there any changes for counting off campus trips as part of noncampus geography?
A: The Appendix did not include any guidance on how to determine whether or not institution-sponsored student trips fall within Clery geography. The 2016 Handbook contained the only formal guidance in this area and with it now rescinded and archived that guidance should not be relied upon, according to the Department of Education.
Therefore, as is typical with Clery, the answer to this question is “It depends”. Under the previous guidance, trips fell in the noncampus category if the institution owned or controlled property that was frequently used by students and used for educational purposes but not within the institution’s reasonably contiguous on-campus geography. With that in mind, institutions will need to decide what they determine to be frequent use by students. The Handbook gave institutions recommendations how the length of time or repeated use should factor into this decision; the removal of the Handbook gives institutions flexibility to determine how they will consistently evaluate frequent use. A campus is not necessarily prohibited from continuing to count those locations as they have for the past four years. It is now up to institutions to determine whether or not it makes sense and supports overall campus safety to continue to count institution sponsored student trips as Clery geography or not.
Q: How does the Handbook rescission impact adhering to the Title IX regulations?
A: It doesn’t. As the Clery Act statute and regulations remain intact, campuses are still required to adhere to both the Clery Act and Title IX regulations in full even though the Handbook has been rescinded. There are some aspects of resource provision for cases of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking that were helpfully expanded upon within the Handbook. As the new Title IX regulations cover cases of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking as defined under the Clery Act and as campuses are being directed by the Department of Education to no longer rely upon the Handbook as guidance, refer to the preamble of the Clery Act regulations (as amended by VAWA) for further context in applying some of those requirements.
We hope these questions and answers were helpful as you continue to navigate this news and that you’ll continue to look to Clery Center in the coming weeks as we further internalize the implications of this rescission and share our recommendations.
November 09, 2020
The Clery Act: Literature Review
By: Tyler Van Vliet
Editor’s note: Tyler Van Vliet was one of our 2020 interns and he spent his time with us compiling a literature review relating to the effectiveness of the Clery Act. We are now sharing that review, and this blog post will briefly go over its contents and major findings. You can find the full review linked at the bottom of this post.
The review is largely divided into four sections:
an overview of scholarly work surrounding the issue of campus safety prior to the Clery Act’s implementation; and
three sections focus on different issues that have arisen in the discourse surrounding Clery: discrepancy between Clery data and self-reported victimization surveys; Clery Act geography; and the substantive and symbolic success of the Clery Act.
As noted in the paper, a common finding and point of concern was that the data provided by the Clery Act drastically underrepresented the actual rate at which campus crime occurred. This should not be surprising due to the fact the Clery Act deals with crimes that often go unreported, including sexual assault and dating violence. For example, it is believed that only 5 to 20% of all completed or attempted cases of rape are ever reported.1
Clery Act geography raises a similar issue, where crime occurs in direct proximity to a campus but not technically on campus. This, in turn, leads to further inaccuracies in reported crime statistics, as they fail to provide an accurate depiction of crime in a given area. Clery geography has also proven to be a point of difficulty in terms of compliance. Many professionals point to vague or confusing language regarding Clery Act geography as making it difficult to determine what or what doesn’t constitute an on-campus crime.
In terms of successes, it is widely agreed upon in the field that the Clery Act has seen a great deal of symbolic success since its implementation. The Clery Act has been highly influential in keeping campus safety a major talking point and maintaining congressional attention, as well as causing institutions of education to discuss the issue of crime both internally and with students. While many commentators have questioned the accuracy and usefulness of Clery-reported crime statistics, it is generally understood that the Clery Act has greatly increased awareness of crime on college campuses. Two leaders in the field, Dennis Gregory and Steven Janosik, go so far as to state that Clery’s true goal is changing institutional behavior, not providing accurate crime statistics. And in this aspect, almost all agree Clery has succeeded. And even authors critical of the Clery Act are quick to point out that it is difficult to measure just how influential Clery has been in driving change and awareness.
There are substantive tangible successes for Clery as well. Annual security reports have become a reliable litmus test for how well a college is responding to the issue of campus crime. Increased reporting rates are recognized as an important indication that a college is taking issues seriously; they are the campuses doing something right. The yearly data provides an easily digestible way for institutions and observers to track ongoing progress. Multiple studies have also found that, overall, professionals that work in campus safety believe that the Clery Act has directly impacted and improved both campus crime reporting processes as well as student confidence in campus security. Finally, Clery mandated emergency notification systems (ENS) have been received extremely positively by both students and professionals. Over 80% of surveyed professionals believed the ENS’s to be effective in informing campus of safety issues, while only 4% believed the systems had no impact. 65% believed the ENS’s directly influenced student’s short-term decision-making regarding safety on campus.2
This blog only highlights the major criticism and successes of the Clery Act addressed in this literature review. We encourage anyone interested to read the paper in its entirety for more detail and specific data. You can download the paper here.
If you have interest in conducting Clery Act research, or you have research on the Clery Act you’d like to share with us, please contact [email protected].
1 Patel, Unnati and Ronald Roesch. “Campus Sexual Assault: Examination of Policy and Research.” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 10, no. 2 (2018): 103-111.
2 Travis W. Douglas, “Efficacy of Clery Act Timely Warning and Emergency Notification Messages,” Thomas Jefferson University, 29.
October 25, 2020
Clery Center's Statement of Position on the 2020 Title IX Regulations
Clery Center’s policy work is fueled by our collaboration with institutions. We listen to their successes and challenges in implementing the Clery Act and intersecting federal legislation to inform our own recommendations to policymakers.
Over the past few months institutions have scrambled to update policies addressing sexual harassment, including dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking to align with new Title IX regulations. While we’re committed to helping campuses implement these changes as effectively as possible through our training and technical assistance, we are concerned that these regulations impair the ability of institutions to comply with the Clery Act and undermine the shared goals of the Clery Act and Title IX: to create equitable and transparent processes for responding to violence and crime on campus.
To communicate these concerns to policymakers, we’ve written a position paper that addresses concerns in three specific areas:
The advisor of choice provision;
The jurisdiction of campus dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking policies; and
Our hope is that legislators can support institutions by advocating for necessary additional guidance or future changes to Title IX regulations to address the conflicts and challenges we’ve identified. In the meantime, we will continue to work with campuses to draft policies and procedures that address these potential areas of concern.
For more information about the Title IX regulations and their intersection with the Clery Act, view our free video series with Victim Rights Law Center.
January 28, 2021
Advocating for Policies that Prioritize the Safety of College Students
Never has the passing from one year to another held so much expectation. While in many ways 2021 still looks very much like 2020, we are moving forward in reflection of what we have learned and with hope for what is ahead.
Last week we saw a change in administration, with President Joseph R. Biden and Vice-President Kamala D. Harris taking office. President Biden has a record of supporting legislation aimed at protecting women and vulnerable communities against violence, most notably through his sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that passed in 1994, four years after the Clery Act was signed into law by George H.W. Bush. President Biden also played a key role in VAWA’s reauthorization in 2013, which resulted in amendments to the Clery Act that expanded rights to campus survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. Both laws have a long history of bipartisan support, a legacy we hope to see continued as the impact of interpersonal violence is more magnified than ever amidst the global pandemic.
Our founders, Connie Clery and her late husband Howard Clery, had the opportunity to meet then-Senator Biden on several occasions during their time advocating for legislation to protect college students. Last month, Mrs. Clery sent a personal letter to President Biden congratulating him and Vice-President Harris on their win, and urging them to prioritize the safety of college students across the country. As noted in her letter, we are confident that the leaders appointed to the Department of Education will share our commitment to improving prevention and response efforts relevant to victims of violence and abuse on college campuses. We look forward to forging relationships with the Biden-Harris administrative to accomplish our collective goals.
In this new year we will continue the work we have long been committed to: sharing our expertise on important campus safety legislation and educating elected officials about related issues that need to be addressed.
We remain focused on:
Advocating for updated sub-regulatory guidance for schools on the application of the Clery Act to address the gap left with the sudden late-2020 rescission of the 2016 Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting, a long relied-upon resource.
Collaborating with allied professional organizations to undo the 2020 Title IX regulations that have created unnecessary conflicts between the implementation of the Clery Act and Title IX.
Supporting the passage of the Report and Educate About Campus Hazing (REACH) Act, which will include hazing incidents under the Clery Act, and create a universal definition of hazing that will help us better understand and track hazing as a national problem.
We look forward to providing updates on these issues as they come.
