WASHINGTON – Immediately after the Virginia Tech massacre, several federal legislative initiatives were introduced to improve college and university safety, but two in the U.S. Senate appear to have the greatest likelihood of becoming law.
The Higher Education Act reauthorization bill has just come out of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. It includes amendments to the Clery Act specifically related to emergency man-agement and response.
The other bill has moved through the Judiciary Committee and is similar in content, only it would affect the omnibus crime control bill. It would also fund a national center for campus public safety, appropriating $2 million per year for 2008 and 2009.
According to IACLEA Immediate Past President Steven Healy, “IACLEA fortunately had an opportunity to add substantive comment, and many of our comments were included in the draft of the legislation.” As a result of IACLEA’s and the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s involvement in the process, one of the more onerous provisions of the earlier legislation – 30-minute mandatory notification after an incident – is no longer in play.
Still, how much additional burden the remaining measures will place on colleges, universities and their public safety departments has yet to be determined. Additionally, it remains to be seen whether the mandates will be funded and if campus law enforcement will have direct access to those resources.
“That’s a universal concern we have with most legislation,” says Healy. “The comment we provided to the Leahy/Durbin [Judiciary Committee] bill was the fact that we are extremely concerned about any legislation that mandates something for colleges and universities but does not explicitly mention campus public safety agencies as potential grant recipients. I think we made a very strong argument that to continue to list states and local governments as recipi-ents for something you expect to happen at a college or university is unrealistic. The money needs to flow directly to the institution, both public and private.”
