The College Fix

Until this past spring, if you wanted to know about reported sexual assaults and certain other crimes on the Iowa State University campus, you had to visit the campus police department website. That violated federal law for years, according to an internal audit.

Iowa State Daily reports that auditors said the Clery Act requires schools to proactively notify the community about crimes that “may pose a continuing threat”:

“This has not been about whether we are providing notice,” [Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Warren] Madden said. “It’s a question about how we do it and in essence how do we communicate with the 40,000 individuals that are on the emergency notification lists.”

The Clery Act requires that universities must issue timely warnings that spread information quickly by email, voicemail or text message, according to the Handbook of Campus Safety and Security from the Department of Education.

“Timely warnings may not be issued in a manner or posted in a location that requires the campus community to make requests for them or to search for them. The responsibility for getting the warning out rests solely with the institution,” according to the handbook.

The Associated Press reports that the Department of Education is upping enforcement of the law and schools could face up to $35,000 per violation and “additional sanctions”:

At Iowa State, the recent audit warned the university had no “systematic process” to identify and train employees to report crimes to police as required by the Clery Act. The school also had no single person responsible for compliance and no written procedures for compiling criminal statistics, preparing the annual security report and updating the crime log.

Mass email notifications pose a risk of sorts to schools, AP said: When the University of Iowa changed its notification policy last year,

the school’s warnings contributed to protests in the spring against the administration’s handling of sexual assault. Some regents criticized President Sally Mason, who responded with a plan to crack down on sexual assault.

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