Providing security on campus is about more than just keeping students, faculty, and visitors safe. Highly trained campus security teams must also stay compliant with all university security regulations. The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting is your go-to guide for meeting those compliance measures. Here’s a bit of background:
What is the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting?
The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting is designed to provide university administrators and senior security leadership with a step-by-step guide to understanding and complying with the requirements of the Higher Education Act.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 was originally created to introduce, into law, measures that would strengthen the nation’s college and university resources. While the act originally focused on providing financial aid for students by way of scholarships and student loans, students soon began to look at more than money when choosing a college to attend.
The Clery Act
In 1986, a 19-year-old student at Lehigh University was raped and murdered in her resident hall. The incident caused an uproar regarding the amount of crime that was going unreported on campuses across the country.
The result of that uproar was the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1990, named after the victim of the 1986 crime that sparked the backlash. The Clery Act requires that all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs maintain records of all crimes on campus and make those records readily available to the public.
The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting is vital to a university’s security department because it lays out the foundation for complying with the Clery Act.
What’s in The Handbook?
Complying with the HEA is critical to university security operations, and if that compliance falls on your shoulders, the handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting is one of the most important tools you can keep at hand. Here’s an overview of what you’ll find within its pages.
The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting is of the most important tools campus security can have on hand.
All university campuses who participate in Title IV federal student financial assistance program meets the HEA requirements. The Clery Act requires institutions do more than simply “report a crime.” They must specifically convey what crime was committed, where they occurred, when they were reported, and to whom they were reported. The handbook can help you break down these requirements based on the size of your institution, making the reporting process far more streamlined.
As you might imagine, accuracy is paramount when you’re attempting to comply with a federal regulation like the HEA. The handbook assists in determining how to classify crimes and work with local law enforcement agencies to ensure the statistics you report are as accurate as possible.
The handbook can also assist in creating an accurate crime log and parameters for notifying campus personnel during emergencies that can run the range from assault and stalking to missing students and fires on campus.
Partnering for Stronger University Safety
While the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting should have a spot on the shelf of any university security director or campus administrator, there are some additional tools that can help in complying with the Clery Act that can ensure security on campus is prepared to respond to any emergency.
Campus security software like that from Trackforce Valiant can help your team respond to threats quickly and accurately, no matter how large your campus might be. Trackforce’s Command Center (GSOC) allows administrators to access an entire security operation from any device with a web browser.
In the event of an emergency, security personnel will have access to real-time intelligence, allowing them to make better decisions and to coordinate with each other for the best possible solution in maintaining student safety.
Trackforce Valiant’s Real-Time Dashboard will allow you to collect important data from multiple sources. That information can not only be used to drive the most appropriate responses to threats, but it can also be customized so that pulling those campus safety statistics and complying with the Clery Act will be as smooth as possible.
The campus security act and complying with federal regulations are two of the tallest orders a campus security team can face. The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting, along with robust campus safety software are two of the most valuable tools that can be used in tackling those orders. Request a consultation today to see how Trackforce can enhance your security on campus.
