Clery Act

But here is the illegal question nobody asks until there is a problem.

When a school learns about a serious crime, what is it legally required to tell the rest of campus and how fast? Today on Illegal Radio, we're talking about the Clery Act, what a timely warning is and how it differs from an emergency notification why Cornell's crime alert went out on November 8th, 2024, the same day she reported yet dated the incident October 25th to 26th, while her lawsuit says October 19th to 20th.

Why no emergency alert is required when a report comes in weeks later, and how Clery, which is about transparency, differs from Title IX, which is about a school's duty to respond.

And we'll talk about something harder.

And then the accountability and access to justice.

What's really interesting about the timing of the Cornell case is that it actually emerged just as colleges were releasing their annual Clery Act security reports due October 1st.

Backing up to the context of this, the Cleary Act of 1990 was really groundbreaking because it required that transparency on sexual assault and other crimes.

And it required institutions of higher ed to report and make public incidents that were reported to campus authorities or police.

You go to the superintendent of public instruction and say, you know, uh, how many children, sir or ma'am, uh, are, uh, abused in California schools.

They can't tell you because no one knows because no one keeps track of the data in colleges, uh, We actually know what they report because they have to prepare something, call it under the Clery Act, a report of crimes that occur at college campuses.

There is no such requirement for elementary schools.

There is no law in any state that requires parents to be notified if their child's teacher is removed from molesting a kid.

So these students, including one of my own advisees, a graduate student, were, um, subject to really draconian measures that significantly impacted their ability to do what they were actually entitled to do, which is to exercise their right of, um, peaceful protest on campus.

Now, when, uh, we have a contrast between protesters against what I believe is a genocide punished and sometimes ending up unable to continue with their education at Cornell versus an atmosphere where sexual assault is according to the, um, uh, reporting in the Clery Act, um, we have sexual assault that is really rampant on campus, and I think nothing meaningful has been done about that.

Now, it is true that our president has had, um, a task force that he initiated which set up various workshops, and it did study the issue, but what was there to learn that we didn't know already? Um, this appears to be, as far as I can tell, again according to that, uh, reporting that is mandated according to the Clery Act, it appears that, uh, sexual assault in various forms as well as forms of gender-based violence are the majority of crimes that are alleged on campus.

And that I think puts it in perspective When you also have over half of sorority sisters who have reported in that internal survey data being sexually assaulted, I think it is appropriate to think about a change of leadership at this university to really begin to address and crack down on sexual assaults that there is a culture of toleration for.

Again, we have recently seen data that shows that people were found responsible, and I should say men were found responsible, um, for, uh, over a dozen cases of sexual assaults on campus, and yet just two were expelled.