Campus Security Authority Letter

September 3, 2024

RE: Clery Act – Campus Security Authority

 

According to federal law, specifically The Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act of 1990 (recently re-named the Clery Act), the Albright College Department of Public Safety is required to report statistics concerning the occurrence of certain criminal offenses reported to the local police agency or any official of the institution who is defined as a “Campus Security Authority.”

The definition of “Campus Security Authority”, according to federal law, is as follows: “An official of an institution who has significant responsibility for student and campus activities, including, but not limited to, student housing, student discipline, and campus judicial proceedings.” For example, a dean of students who oversees student housing, a student center, or student extra-curricular activities, has significant responsibility for student and campus activities. Similarly, a director of athletics, a team coach, and faculty advisor to a student group also have significant responsibility for student and campus activities. A single teaching faculty member is unlikely to have significant responsibility for student and campus activities, except when serving as an advisor to a student group. A physician in a campus health center or a counselor in a counseling center whose only responsibility is to provide care to students are unlikely to have significant responsibility for student and campus activities. Also, clerical staff is unlikely to have significant responsibility for student and campus activities.

The criminal offenses that we are required to report are murder/non-negligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, sex offenses (forcible and non-forcible), robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson, liquor law violations, drug violations and/or illegal weapons possession. We are also required to report statistics for hate (bias) related crimes for murder-non-negligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, sex offenses (forcible and non-forcible), robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson, larceny-theft, vandalism, intimidation, simple assault, liquor law violations, drug violations and/or illegal weapons possession. We are required to report offenses that occur on campus, in residence facilities, in non-campus property and on public property and contiguous to campus property.

The Violence Against Women Act bill, signed by President Obama in March of 2013, provides amendments to the Clery Act which includes the categories identified below. Statistics must be tabulated for the categories of dating violence, domestic violence and stalking in the same manner as previously kept statistics for other Clery reportable offenses.

• Dating violence: violence committed by a person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the victim, and where the existence of such a relationship shall be determined based on a consideration of the following factors: 1) the length of the relationship, 2) the type of relationship, 3) the frequency of interaction between the persons involved in the relationship.
• Domestic violence: felony or misdemeanor crimes of violence committed by a current or former spouse of the victim, by a person who is cohabitating with or has cohabited with the victim, as a spouse, by a person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim under thedomestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction received grant monies, or by any other person against an adult or youth victim who is protected from that person’s acts under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction.
• Stalking: engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to 1) fear or his or her safety or the safety of others, or 2) suffer substantial emotional distress.

Please forward this letter and the attached Crime Statistic Report Form along to all of those individuals in your department who meet the definition of Campus Security Authority, as explained above.

If you or members of your department are aware of any incident of crime occurring on campus, in residence facilities, or in other areas as described above, the incident should be reported to the Department of Public Safety as promptly as possible so that we can respond, investigate, and take any necessary action. In addition, please complete the attached Blank Incident Report for CSAs and send it to the Department of Public Safety. On the form, please provide the date and location of the incident and a brief description of the incident so that we can appropriately classify it in accordance with the crime definitions published by the Federal Bureau of Investigations Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the U.S. Department of Education.

If you have any questions about this request or you would like to discuss the specifics about an incident, please feel free to contact me at X7673 or via email at mgross@albright.edu. Thank you for your assistance in complying with this federal law. Please complete the report form here.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Gross ’11

Director