Compliance with Federal Reporting Standards for Incidences of Sexual Assault on SUNY and CUNY Campuses.
Introduction
The Senate bill no. 04374 A involves amending the education laws concerning the documentation of sexual assault and related crimes and provide access to annual crime statistics in all campuses that receive state aid and SUNY AND CUNY institutions. According to the bill sponsored by senator Parker and Bailey of Montogemery seeks to ensure that students are made aware of crime statistics on their campuses and the safety policies put in place on campus regarding sexual assault and other crimes. The pending legislation also seeks to compel the SUNY and CUNY institutions to comply with crime recording by ensuring that an employee with a bachelor’s degree in either nursing, psychology, or social work is appointed to monitor compliance. Also, the legislation aims at ensuring that surveys are conducted in both state and city universities of New York on incidences of on-campus sexual assaults. Besides the laws of education that exist in New York City and the United States at large, the crime reporting standards legislation needs to be emphasized to ensure the safety of children on campus from sexual assault and other crimes.
Description
The pending legislation proposed aims to strengthen the existing higher education laws regarding the safety of students on campus. One of the ways that the safety of students can be monitored is by recording crime statistics to determine what’s going on on campus. Therefore, this legislation provides the chance to analyze sexual assault and other crime statistics on-campus. According to an article on Examining Crime on Campus: The Influence of Institutional Factors on Reports of Crime at Colleges and Universities by Shannon K. Jacobsen, the author analyzes the Clery act.
The Clerk act of 1998 required institutions of higher education to raise awareness to those on campus regarding crime prevention measures in place on campus. The research question tested by the author of this article is whether institutions with more protective measures influence the reporting of crime in institutions of higher learning. The author used two different data sets that involved members ofthe campus community in investigating the relationship between security measures on campus and levels of crime.”The results of the study showed that campuses with more security measures and more men enrolled than women reported higher rates of on-campus crimes” (Jacobsen, 2017). Crimes on campus are associated with security measures put in place, and therefore the pending legislation is essential in ensuring safety. The law requires the administration to inform students and prospective students about the crime statistics and protection and safety policies put in place.
Among the most common and severe crimes on campus involves sexual assault cases among the students on campus. Sexual assault cases remain high on campus, and most of these cases are not even reported for different reasons. From victimization to fear and perception among college students, and this seems to reduce the number of people reporting sexual assault crimes on-campus. According to an article on sexual assault on campus, the research question that tested involved why sexual assault cases remained high on campus over time. The authors of the material used a multi-level approach to examine the research question that included nine months of ethnographic observation of a women’s floor in a party dorm at Large Midwestern University. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 42-floor residents and 16 group interviews with other students. “The results of the study showed that parties provide a chance for fun but also a ground for sexual assault” (Armstrong, Hamilton, & Sweeney, 2006). However, most of these cases are not reported, and therefore more severe measures need to be effected to obtain these statistics to make policies. The pending legislation compels the chancellor to conduct anonymous surveys on incidences of sexual assault both in city and state universities.
Before this legislation, there have been other laws and legislations that have been passed regarding the issues of crime on campus. The campus security Act of 1990, for instance, mandated postsecondary schools to report detailed crime statistics and security policies publicly. Certain on-campus crimes have made it to the media, creating an impression that campuses in the United States are not safe. However, according to an article discussing the results of victimization conducted in a major university, whatever the media reports may not always be accurate. “The data from the victimization study showed that crimes on-campus are relatively lower than general crime rates; crime on-campus are also less common and less severe than general crimes. The results also showed that the image portrayed by the media regarding campus crime is not supported by data” (Henson & Stone, 2009). Campus crime is not as common as the media has portrayed it to be, and the only way to change this outlook of campus crime is by having the right numbers. These numbers can only be obtained when campus crimes are reported and the standards of reporting these crimes monitored and adhered to the letter. The pending legislation provides measures to ensure accurate campus crime statistics are captured.
The pending legislation provides the missing links on-campus crimes such that it allows for more clear measures on how campus crimes should be reported and accessed. However, there is a need to determine how safe the higher education institution are for students and the campus community. A descriptive study conducted by Jennings, Gover, & Pudrzynska, they sort to find out the safety issues of self-reported victimization among female and male college students. The authors used a sample of 564 undergraduates from a large southeastern university. “The results of the study showed that students used constrained behavior to avoid on-campus victimization crimes.Significant gender differences were also found in self‐reported sexual assault and property crime victimization among the students in the sample” (Jennings, Gover, & Pudrzynska, 2007). The legislation avoids the victimization of students when it comes to crime and crime reporting on campus.
Conclusion/Recommendations
A notion has been by the media to portray institutions of high education as unsafe for students. Therefore, different legislations and laws have been enacted to address the crime challenges in universities and colleges. The pending law on-campus crime reporting and statistics regarding documenting of campus sexual assaults and related crimes is such intervention on addressing security issues on the campus. However, if the pending legislation is approved, research is necessary on the issues that are affecting the security of students on-campus. Research is required in determining whether the disconnect in campus crimes is the lack of reporting standards or other issues affecting the students. Sexual assault on campus continues to rise by day, and therefore, research should be conducted on the reasons behind these rise on sexual assaults increase. Conducting anonymous surveys is a good step towards knowing the numbers of sexual assault cases, but how much will the impact be to the victims when the surveys are done. Research should also be conducted on compliance issues, who among the tasked people are failing, and each of these should be made aware of the implications of non-compliance to the reporting standards.