Covering Up Crime Can Cost You
Not reporting incidents can damage a campus’ credibility.
It was disturbing for me to hear from a family member that school administrators in my old district were apparently caught covering up an incident where a group of students on a field trip where engaged in an orgy. Allegedly, a group of students who were not being properly supervised were caught using drugs and engaging in sex by a staff member who walked in on them.
The incident was not reported to law enforcement authorities as required by law at the time. Later, a student filed a report that she had been raped during the incident, and now many parents are upset about how the situation was handled.
If this representation of the chain of events is accurate, the district has suffered significant damage to its reputation. Though much progress has been made in the area of campus crime reporting, there are still too many incidents where campus officials suffer tremendous long-term damage to their credibility trying to keep incidents quiet.
It takes decades for campus organizations to build public trust and credibility but only minutes to lose it.
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About the Author
Michael Dorn, Contributor
Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International, a global non profit campus safety center. During his 30 year campus safety career, Michael has served as a university police officer, corporal, sergeant and lieutenant. He served as a school system police chief for ten years before being appointed the lead expert for the nation's largest state government K-20 school safety center. The author of 25 books on school safety, his work has taken him to Central America, Mexico, Canada, Europe, Asia, South Africa and the Middle East. Michael welcomes comments, questions or requests for clarification at mike@weakfish.org. Note: The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety magazine.
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