Issue Briefs

About

A safe campus environment is a priority for colleges, students, and their families alike. Students, faculty, administrators, and visitors should feel safe and secure any time they step foot on a college campus.  As such, institutions have devoted significant resources to campus security personnel and safety measures, and lawmakers have maintained an active interest in the issue. 

The Clery Act is the primary vehicle guiding federal requirements in this area.  The act not only focuses heavily on detailed breakdowns of crime statistics but also requires institutions to issue timely warnings to alert the campus community to imminent threats, conduct emergency notifications and emergency response testing, and maintain crime and fire safety policies, procedures, and practices.  Institutional failure to comply with the Clery Act can result in large fines or the suspension, or limiting, of Title IV funding. 

As the act has grown increasingly complex, staying in compliance with it has become a significant issue for many institutions, particularly those that are small or that do not have the resources to maintain large compliance staff. As a result, enforcement of the Clery Act often results in steep fines for institutions making good faith efforts to comply with the law. 

Recent Developments

Over the years, campus safety requirements under the Clery Act have expanded considerably. The act was amended in 2013 to add new requirements regarding campus sexual assault and again in 2022 to mandate that institutions conduct campus climate surveys using a federally developed survey tool.

Most recently, the Clery Act was amended to address issues related to hazing. Under the new requirements, which began in 2025, institutions must collect hazing statistics, publish their hazing policies, and produce a report on hazing violations twice annually.

The Department of Education also periodically makes changes to its Clery Act guidance. For many years, the agency maintained The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting (Clery Handbook), a lengthy compliance manual that set forth complex requirements that many institutions found to be confusing, inconsistent, and simply overwhelming.  During the final months of the first Trump Administration, the Department announced that it had rescinded the 265-page Clery Handbook and replaced it with a short guidance document clarifying that campuses now have greater flexibility with respect to compliance with Clery requirements.

Intended to reduce regulatory burden, the new guidance contains several significant changes, including revisions regarding Clery geography, Clery crimes, and campus security authorities. In general, the key principle outlined is that the Department “will accept an institution’s reasonable interpretation of terms as long as those terms are defined clearly to individuals who review the campus’ Clery Act reports.”