Clery Act Compliance Guide
Leverage Your Mass Notification System for Clery Act Compliance
By Kara Stamets, Content Marketing Specialist at Alertus Technologies
Federally-funded colleges and universities are required to disclose public campus crime data and ensure timely emergency notifications as mandated by the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act).
Signed in 1990, the Clery Act is a federal law enforced by the U.S. Department of Education that requires institutions to publish crime statistics, support victims of violence, and publicly outline policies and procedures made to improve campus safety. The law’s namesake is Jeanne Clery, a young college student raped and murdered in her Lehigh University residence hall in 1986, which sparked a backlash against undisclosed crimes on campuses across the nation.
The Clery Act was amended in 2013 by the Campus Save Act to include disclosure of sexual violence offenses. Security officials are required to continuously evaluate their emergency notification systems to comply with the Clery Act and facilitate a safer, more alert community.
The Clery Act has three basic requirements.
Colleges and universities must:
Publish an Annual Security Report (ASR)
Maintain a public crime log
Issue timely emergency notifications
Is your campus prepared for an assault, active shooter, arson, or another emergency? Alertus Technologies’ unified facility notification system is compliant with many mass notification codes and mandates, including the Clery Act.
Below, we will review the three main requirements of the Clery Act and how your mass notification system (MNS) should support your institution in fulfilling compliance.
Requirement One: Annual Security Report
Colleges and universities must complete and publish an ASR every October 1st that includes reported campus crimes for three prior calendar years. Crimes include criminal offenses, hate crimes, sexual violence, and arrests and referrals for disciplinary action. Campus officials must also enclose details on how they’ve improved campus safety.
Your MNS should provide a detailed alert history that you can easily access and assemble into the annual ASR.
Crimes may be reported and announced in different ways; for example, if a robbery occurs in off-campus housing, an email may be distributed to the campus population, but if an active shooter is present, sirens, panic buttons, and more come into play. Depending on the situation, not all alerting methods may be needed. Still, no matter what is used, a complete multilayered MNS system should record all alert data and store it in one system to be easily accessed.
Requirement Two: Maintain a Public Crime Log
The Clery Act requires that institutions maintain a daily public crime log of reported incidents within their jurisdiction. The record must include crimes committed on campus, in campus student housing, on public property within campus borders, immediately adjacent to campus, and in non-campus buildings used for educational purposes, such as those owned by student organizations. Victim confidentiality must be maintained when declaring an incident for the public crime log.
Having a complete MNS system will assist officials in daily campus operations to ensure maximum security, communicate effectively across departments, and send emergency alerts quickly and securely. Maintaining the log with many departments to support across campus is simplified because data can be pulled and consolidated into one system.
Requirement Three: Issue Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications
During a time-sensitive crisis, transparent communication across a college campus is critical to keeping students, faculty, and staff safe. To comply with the Clery Act, campus officials must evaluate the threat level of an incident and determine if a timely warning must be issued to the entire campus population or a specific at-risk area. In an emergency, campus officials may deploy outdoor sirens, public address (PA) announcements, fire alarms, text/SMS messages, voice or push notifications, social media updates, and emails.
Utilizing a multilayered MNS system will supply a combination of methods to communicate with the campus population and improve the rate at which messages are transmitted and received. Time is of the essence during an emergency, so it is essential to regularly evaluate your system's effectiveness.
Further, organizations should consider developing an Emergency Notification System (ENS) Plan that summarizes steps before, during, and after an emergency. An ENS Plan is a framework that provides recipients with timely, actionable, and instructional information.
Ensure Clery Act Compliance with Alertus
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid evaluates each institution’s ASR to determine compliance. Many institutions have faced considerable fines for noncompliance with the Clery Act, including faulty reporting methods, insufficient emergency alert response times, and inaccurately defining crimes. Evaluating the performance of your current MNS system is vital in determining where you stand regarding campus safety and compliance.
Alertus Technologies offers a full suite of mass notification solutions that alerts recipients and records and stores data within seconds each time an alert is deployed.
In an emergency, alerts can be activated through hardware and software solutions, including the Rapid Response Console, Activator App, Panic Buttons, etc. An alert activation is sent through the Alertus Server, which forms the foundation of the Alertus System. Colleges and universities can install this software on campus computers or have it hosted remotely. The server provides alert history, recipient acknowledgment, device activation, location reports, and event dashboards, facilitating effortless incident reporting for campus leadership to save and gather data for their annual ASR.
After an alert is activated and acknowledged by the system, it can be disseminated to multiple endpoints, such as the Alertus Alert Beacon, Desktop Notification, IP speakers, Fire Alarm Interface, Digital Signage, Cable TV Overrides, and LED Marquees.
The Alertus System is compatible with several outbound integrators, so we can assess your institution’s current system to identify gaps and ensure complete multilayered coverage of your MNS to meet Clery Act compliance.
To see how our system works, request a demo by submitting your information below.