Built-In Tools for Clery Act Compliance

Campus crime reporting is a complicated business.

Every college or university that participates in federal financial aid programs has a complex set of rules that it has to follow when it comes to public disclosure and notification of crimes. And failing to do it correctly opens up the institution to possible fines and other penalties.

Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed the Clery Act, a federal law that set national standards for how campuses report crime. Over the years, those requirements have shifted and expanded, adding additional categories of crimes and additional geographical areas related to college campuses that are covered by the law.

The idea is to provide schools and those who live and work on their campuses the data they need to make good decisions about their safety. For many colleges and universities, it can be almost a full-time job to compile the required information and to issue timely warnings and emergency notifications about crimes like sex offenses, aggravated assault, robbery, and hate crimes.

The current requirements, some of which went into effect just months ago, include:

• Publishing an annual security report on Oct. 1 of each year
• Maintaining a public crime log
• Disclosing statistics for crimes in seven major categories (and a bunch of sub categories) that take place on campus, in “unobstructed areas immediately adjacent to or running through the campus,” and at certain non-campus facilities, such as Greek housing or remote classrooms
• Issuing warnings about those crimes which pose a serious or ongoing threats to students or employees
• Devising an emergency response, notification, and testing policy
• Compiling data about fires for federal reporting and an on-campus log
• Enacting policies and procedures to handle reports of missing students

Zuercher Suite takes the headache out of being Clery compliant. Zuercher Technologies doesn’t market a "Clery Module” like some other software vendors because we don’t need to. Zuercher Suite software already has all the power an agency could need to collect and report the data that is needed.

Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville needed to upgrade software for its dispatch center, records management, and mobile CAD and records.  The college was able to participate in a regional records system using Zuercher Suite with the Lawrenceville Police Department.

Both agencies got an extra benefit with Zuercher Suite: easier Clery Act compliance for the college.

When the campus safety office went live with Zuercher Suite, they configured their system to automatically include a custom form for every crime in the prescribed locations that would fit the Clery Act requirements.

The software is set to identify where and what needs to be reported – whether it’s on campus or the areas nearby the college that are covered by the Clery Act. The form prompts the officer filling out the case report to collect those eight or nine pieces of data that need to be collected. All the officer has to do is fill out the fields that are highlighted and the job is done.

The Zuercher Custom Form saves the Georgia Gwinnett College campus safety office countless hours of searching for and compiling records. There’s no need to dig through spreadsheets from the police department or type data into a report or notification document. The information is already there and ready to be printed or emailed in the form they’ve designed. 

When it’s time to submit the statistics to the U.S. Department of Education, the college can run a customized statistical report on all Clery Act forms. Or even set the software to just do it automatically.

And if some of the specific requirements of the Clery Act change in the future – which is likely since the law has been revised multiple times over the years – the college has the ability to easily modify their form and the information they need to collect. They already know how to set up their form and can edit it themselves in minutes.

Better records are just better for everyone on campus. Lost and found property, a huge issue for most college safety departments, is easier to manage. Georgia Gwinnett College employees can use Zuercher Suite to quickly look up details on missing or turned in items. Whether an incident is Clery-related or not, they’ve got the ability to run statistical reports on anything they need.

With Zuercher Suite, you have all the data your campus needs, with powerful tools to create customized forms and reports. Your public safety officers and everyone on campus has the information they need for a safer place to live, learn, and work.