Increased Focus on Campus Security and Sexual Violence Remains on Both the Immediate and Distant Horizons 

September, 2014 - Jeb Gerth, Partner and Aron Karabel, Associate

On July 9, TICUA and Waller presented a webinar on the Campus SaVE Act ("SaVE"), addressing the newly effective legislative amendments to the Clery Act incorporated into the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. A recording of the webinar is available on the TICUA website. In addition to outlining proposed regulations that have been recently negotiated to implement SaVE, the webinar forecasted likely compliance requirements as well as anticipated guidance from the Department of Education. That forecast noted the unsettled state of affairs, with an effective statute requiring legal compliance but scant regulatory or other guidance on what compliance entails, including compliance requirements for upcoming October 1, 2014 Annual Safety Reports ("ASR"). 


On July 14, the Department of Education indeed provided some additional guidance through a Dear Colleague Letter on what the Department expects of institutions in this interim period, and specifically what is expected of institutions when they complete their ASRs later this year. Building on the Department's prior instruction to make good faith efforts at compliance, the Dear Colleague Letter provides the following additional guidance:


Institutions must make a good-faith effort to include these statistics for these crimes for calendar year 2013 in the ASR that must be issued later this year. Institutions must also make a good-faith effort to ensure that the statistics for the new crime categories are accurate and complete; however, we understand that institutions may not have complete statistics for 2013. While institutions must include calendar year 2013 statistics for domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking in their ASRs to be issued to students, employees, and prospective students and employees later this year, they will not report these new crimes to the Department in the Web-based data collection this year. Instead, institutions will report the statistics for both calendar years 2013 and 2014 to the Department during the data collection period in Fall 2015. We have delayed the reporting of statistics for incidents of domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking for one year because, once the final regulations are in place, the Department must follow certain procedures required under the Paperwork Reduction Act to revise the Web-based data collection instrument.



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