U.S. colleges and universities faced unique safety and security challenges this year. The ongoing Israel-Hamas war forced many campus leaders to address their protest and encampment policies to ensure the proper balance of First Amendment rights with student safety.
Liberty University was also hit with the largest-ever Clery fine, which also forced campus leaders to look at its own Clery/Title IX policies and procedures.
Whatever the topic may be, it is always our hope that the content we share throughout the year provides useful insight into the current safety and security landscape on college campuses while offering helpful solutions and lessons learned.
Here’s a round-up of the most-read 2024 higher ed safety and security articles.
1. Which Colleges and Universities Are Experiencing Pro-Palestine Protests?
Last spring, more than 100 college campuses, mostly in the U.S., experienced pro-Palestine demonstrations and encampments, resulting in student arrests, suspensions, and expulsions. Hundreds of students were arrested and major events, such as graduation ceremonies, were cancelled. Those protests are still happening, although significantly less frequent.
While protests are not new to college campuses, the nuances that come with the complex topic at hand have forced schools to quickly adapt their policies and procedures, balancing First Amendment rights with student safety.
Read more about how various colleges approached the campus protests.
Other articles related to the protests that also performed well include:
- Pro-Palestinian Protestors Shut Down U. of Michigan Student Government
- UCLA Announces New Office of Campus Safety After Violent Protests
2. Liberty University to Pay Record $14 Million Fine for Violating Clery Act
In March 2024, Liberty University was walloped with a $14 million fine for violating the federal Clery Act in its handling of sexual assault allegations. The penalty was the largest Clery fine in history, dwarfing the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.5 million fine in 2019 against Michigan State over its systemic failure to address claims of sexual abuse committed by former sports doctor Larry Nassar.
A 102-page final review conducted by the U.S. Department of Education lists numerous ways the university violated the Clery Act and harmed sexual assault victims.
This wasn’t the first time the Department of Ed deemed Liberty to be in violation of the Clery Act. Back in 2010, the department reviewed allegations by a sexual assault survivor and found that the school had violated numerous provisions of the Clery Act as the law existed at that time. The current review found that Liberty University failed to initiate and sustain remedial action on the Department’s 2010 findings.
Read more about Liberty’s Clery violations.
3. 5 Takeaways from the Liberty University Clery Audit
Several months later after the Education Department levied its fine against Liberty University, we published a contributed article by Elliot Cox, a school safety analyst for the Idaho School Safety and Security Program, about the major takeaways from the Liberty Clery audit. That article ended up being the third most-read higher ed article in 2024.
Read the informative article here.
Another article, Clery Act Compliance: Why Fines Are Getting So Big and How Colleges Can Avoid Them, was also one of the most read stories this year, showing college campuses are awakening to the potential fines that could be levied against them if they don’t comply with the Clery Act.
4. An Updated List of States That Allow Campus Carry
This article, originally published in 2017, has made the top 10 list each year since as it is continuously updated when new states pass campus carry legislation.
Most recently, in May 2024, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice signed Senate Bill 10, the Campus Self-Defense Act. The law, which went into effect in July, allows people with a valid concealed carry license to carry a concealed pistol or revolver on the grounds of higher education institutions.
And, according to the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, varying campus carry bills are being considered in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Tennessee.
Find out which states currently allow campus carry.
If your organization has chosen or been forced to allow concealed carry on campus, here are some recommended practices that would reduce a policy’s potential pitfalls.
5. College Mental Health: 59% of Students Have Anxiety, 43% Are Depressed
Student mental health continues to be at the forefront of many school safety discussions among both K-12 and college/university campus leaders.
A study, released in March 2024 by research publisher Wiley, shows that post-pandemic, more than 80% of college students are struggling emotionally at least somewhat, with more than 25% reporting they are struggling significantly. Students are largely dealing with anxiety (59%), burnout (58%), and depression (43%).
Students cited several challenges that are impacting their mental health, including balancing school with work or family (59%), paying for tuition (50%) and living expenses (49%), and uncertainty on how to best prepare for a future career (41%). Another 61% said they struggle with classroom engagement and retention, with 25% reporting they have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Here’s more about the study’s findings.
A similar article on loneliness among college students also received many pageviews this year. Check it out here.
6. College Faculty Burnout: The Statistics and Solutions
Another popular article from this year focuses on the mental health of college faculty. As students continue to struggle with their mental health, college faculty members are also struggling with providing them with the support they need, largely due to their own burnout.
According to a national survey published by TimelyCare in Jan. 2024, 53% of faculty and staff members at public and private four-year and two-year colleges and universities have considered leaving their jobs due to burnout, increased workload, and stress. Part of the problem is the vast majority (76%) feel supporting students’ mental health has become a job expectation.
A Healthy Minds Study (HMS) Faculty/Staff Survey, distributed from Sept. 2022 to May 2023, found that 90% of faculty agree that “student mental health is significantly worse now than when they began their careers.” Another 72% reported having had one-on-one conversations with a student about their mental or emotional health in the past year.
Nearly 50% of faculty also said supporting those students has “taken a toll on my own mental and emotional health,” and 81% feel their institution should be investing more resources to support faculty and staff mental health and wellbeing.
Read more from the study.
7. Ohio State: Mother Fatally Falls from Stadium at Graduation
Colleges are faced with unique safety and security challenges when large groups of non-students come to campus for events like football games, Homecoming week, and graduation ceremonies.
In May, a woman tragically jumped to her death during her daughter’s graduation ceremony at Ohio State. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene after falling 136 feet from the stands at Ohio Stadium.
Witnesses say the woman climbed over the stadium’s concrete wall near the Bell Tower and jumped. Her family says she suffered from mental health challenges and had attempted suicide at least twice before.
Read about the incident here.
If you or someone you know might be at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional information.
8. 2 Ex-Penn State Frat Leaders Plead Guilty in Timothy Piazza Hazing Death
The 2017 death of Penn State student Timothy Piazza has significantly impacted how colleges and universities mitigate and address hazing, which is why stories related to the tragedy continue to receive much attention.
In Aug. 2024, seven years after Piazza died following a hazing incident at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, two of his former fraternity brothers pleaded guilty to charges stemming from their actions during a pledging event.
Piazza’s death resulted in one of the largest hazing indictments in U.S. history. The fraternity and 18 of its members were indicted on involuntary manslaughter charges and Beta Theta Pi was permanently banned from Penn State. Although court rulings led to the dismissal of many of the major charges, four served prison terms for their roles.
Laws stiffening penalties for hazing have also been enacted since Piazza’s death. In 2018, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed the Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law, commonly referred to as “Tim’s Law.” The law provides immunity to individuals needing medical assistance as a result of hazing or those who seek help for them, strengthens penalties for organizations that haze and introduces four new criminal offenses, including hazing, aggravated hazing, organizational hazing, and institutional hazing. It also requires all organizations that consist primarily of students to publish anti-hazing policies and publicly report hazing violations.
Read more here.
9. The Murder of Laken Riley at the University of Georgia
Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, was killed on the University of Georgia’s main campus while out for a run on Feb. 22, 2024. Her killer, 26-year-old Jose Ibarra, was found guilty of malice murder and felony murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Riley’s death sparked conversations about emergency communications on college campuses. On the day of her murder, an AT&T network service outage left over 71,000 customers without calling or data capabilities for up to 12 hours. While Riley’s call went through to 911, the outage hindered her roommates’ efforts to locate her when she didn’t come home after her run, according to KOAT.
Shortly after her death, a UGA student started a petition urging for the installation of emergency lights in the area where Riley’s body was found.
“Only 4% of public universities don’t have a blue light phone system,” one person wrote on the petition. “Yesterday there was a nationwide cell phone outage. We can’t depend only on an app for students’ safety.”
According to UGAPD’s website, UGA was one of the first campuses to install emergency call boxes in 1988. In early 2000, telephone systems started moving away from analog technology to digital, and in 2004, the school learned the blue light phone system infrastructure would not be able to support analog technology.
While there is no way to know if a blue light system would have saved Riley’s life, it reiterated the importance of having multiple modes of emergency notification, including personal safety apps, anonymous tip lines, and panic alarms, among others.
Read the full article here.
10. MSU Security Upgrades 1 Year After Mass Shooting
While active shooter incidents unsurprisingly make headlines, we were glad to see this article made this year’s list. Three Michigan State University students, Brian Fraser, Arielle Anderson, and Alexandria Verner, were killed in a campus shooting on Feb. 13, 2023. Within a year of the shooting, MSU implemented the following security upgrades:
- Most of the more than 800 classroom doors on campus can now be locked from the inside and require a key to unlock them from the outside
- Doors with lockdown buttons near them now automatically engage their locks when the lockdown buttons are pushed and first responders are notified
- Restricted access to buildings across campus, including requiring students and faculty to use their university ID cards to enter most buildings from 6 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends
- An upgraded and expanded video surveillance system with a security operations center (SOC) that is staffed 24/7
- Expanded emergency notification system that allows alerts to be sent via the SafeMSU app
- Outdoor sirens and green light phones upgraded to play tone-based alerts
- Installation of walk-through metal detectors at Spartan Stadium, Munn Ice Area, and the MSU Tennis Center
