7/20/97 
PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW ABOUT CRIME ON CAMPUSES 
By Linda Seebach 
 
College and university administrators are just about as likely to talk about crime on their campuses as people selling houses are to reveal toxic waste in the backyard. That is, not at all unless they're compelled to. 
    In theory, colleges have been compelled to release information about campus crime since 1992, when the federal Campus Security Act was passed. And they do, but in practice the figures are incomplete and often confusing. Many universities maintain their own internal judicial systems as well as their own security force, and may or may not include cases they handle themselves in their crime reports. The proceedings of these internal systems may be secret, too, with little regard to any standards of due process. 
    I encountered both of these problems while I worked for the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota, from 1989-1992. Officials were very reluctant to release information that might make the university look bad. And for students caught in it, the campus judicial system could be a nightmare, with the same people service as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. 
     So I'm sympathetic to the aims of H.R. 715, a bill to plug some of the holes in the Campus Security Act. It would require any college or university that has a police or security department of any kind to maintain a daily log, available to the public and the press, of all crimes reported to the department. Also, it would make clear that student disciplinary records involving criminal misconduct cannot be kept secret. The U.S. Department of Education has taken the view that the law guaranteeing privacy of educational records allowed universities to deny access to information about campus crime, a stance the universities are only too happy to endorse. 
     ``We think it's time that college police forces and college judicial organizations started behaving like all other police and courts in the country,'' said Steve Geimann, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, which is one of the organizations backing H.R. 715. 
     The bill had a hearing before a House subcommittee Thursday. Crystal Paulk, now an intern working on freedom-of-information issues for SPJ, testified about her experiences as a journalist working for The Red and the Black, the student paper at the University of Georgia. 
     In Georgia's campus judicial system, students served as advocates for those accused and also for judges. University officials instructed those students not to speak to Paulk and another reporter who prepared a weekely ``Judicial Watch'' column. 
     The paper eventually sued the university, and the Georgia Supreme Court granted access to disciplinary records. From the records, the paper discovered that a student who elected a formal hearing before a panel of students was seven times more likely to be suspended than one who chose an informal hearing before an administrator. The disclosure forced the end to this inconsistent justice. 
     In another case, Paulk said, a prompt announcement by the university of a brutal rape helped prevent further crimes. 
     It's not that crime is overrunning campuses. A study released in 1995 by the U.S. Department of Justice said that students were only one-tenth as likely to be victims of violent crime as the general population, and only half as likely to be victims of property crime. That's even more remarkable than it sounds, considering that students are part of a community consisting mostly of people in the age groups where crime is highest. 
     But crime is not totally absent, either, and students who aren't aware of the facts may take unnecessary risks. 
     In an ideal world, university officials would recognize their responsibilities and provide essential crime information even without a law saying they had to. I'm not enamoured of federal mandates even when their purpose is undeniably worthwhile. But I know it's not going to happen, not with so many colleges desperate to attract new students. The law already exists, and it has improved both campus safety and the campus judiciaries. It's just got a few holes in it, and this bill will help to seal them.