On Campus Safety, the Left Is Hopelessly Confused
Ah, October, when temperatures fall, men rake leaves, and universities publish their annual crime data, as required by the 1990 Clery Act. A surprising addition to the calendar, you say? Perhaps so. But that discordance is nothing compared to the bizarre politics of campus safety.
First, a review. In 1986, a Lehigh University freshman named Jeanne Clery was murdered in her campus dormitory, a depraved act of violence that led directly to the passage of the law bearing the young woman’s name. Each year, American universities that accept G.I. Bill or federal-loan dollars must publish a Security and Fire Safety Report designed to improve student well-being by alerting the public to campus crime statistics. As the Martin Center argued in 2022, Clery Act reporting can be both misleading and seemingly arbitrary, with institutions regularly revising politically charged stats (for example, those concerning “stalking”) upwards or downwards. Nevertheless, the requirement is based on a coherent and sound idea: that universities have an obligation to keep students safe and should reveal, at regular intervals, the extent to which they have succeeded or failed.
Running alongside the Left’s campus-safety pragmatism is an ideological vein that threatens to swamp the whole project. It was at least arguably with this notion in mind that the Biden education department leveled an unprecedented $14 million fine against Liberty University earlier this year. According to the department’s press release, the Lynchburg, Va., institution committed “material and ongoing violations” of the Clery Act between 2016 and 2023, failing, among other things, to “properly classify and disclose [its] crime statistics.” Though critics can (and did) argue that the feds’ interest in Liberty was a “malign” response to the university’s Christian values, the administration’s crackdown was not necessarily vindictive. I would love to see Uncle Sam remove himself from the student-loan business altogether, thus eliminating whole boatloads of regulatory attachments. Yet, as long as the feds are involved, it is at least theoretically reasonable to ask publicly supported colleges to maintain a safe quad.
