Supporting National Campus Safety Awareness Month

Floor Speech

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I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 90, which recognizes the importance of safety on college campuses and promotes the idea of National Campus Safety.

As a community college professor for 20 years and the author of a California bill, the Campus Sexual Assault Safety Act, I understand firsthand how vital campus safety is to enhancing the learning experiences of its students, but more importantly, how raising awareness can serve to prevent campus violence.

We have witnessed this in several tragic cases, for instance, in the case of the death of Jeanne Clery in the late 1980s, who was a freshman at Lehigh University. On April 5, 1986, Jeanne was beaten, raped and murdered in her dormitory room. Jeanne's case brought college campus safety to the forefront when it exposed flaws in the reporting of crime information related to violence on colleges campuses.

At that time, both violent and nonviolent incidents were reported to campus authorities, but administrators had no legal obligation to disclose violent college crimes to the public. In the aftermath of Jeanne's murder, her parents, Connie and Howard Clery, founded Security on Campus, Inc., to end violence on all college campuses.

It is a nonprofit, grass-roots organization dedicated to making campuses safe. Partnering with over 150 colleges from 42 States, Security on Campus, Inc., offers educational programs on sexual assault, alcohol and drugs. Over the past few years, we have seen how important it is to pay attention to our students' safety on campus. It is unfortunate that it takes tragic events like those occurring at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois for us to remember that crimes take place on college campuses all over the country.

More recently, Annie Le, a Yale University graduate student was allegedly murdered and found dead on campus the day she planned to marry her college sweetheart. The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act last year took new action to improve campus safety. It required each educational institution to clearly articulate a method to disseminate emergency notifications to the entire campus body in the case of an emergency. The law also includes measures to ensure that campus preparedness employees coordinate with local law enforcement and emergency management authorities to improve responses to campus emergencies.

Campus safety is relevant, important and necessary. Anyone can become a victim of a campus crime, and it is imperative that students are taught how to avoid dangerous situations. Congress must continue to encourage institutions to update their campus security plans and ensure systems are in place to deal with all types of emergencies. As we commemorate National Campus Safety Awareness Month in September, let us focus our efforts on educating our students about campus safety. Students need to be reminded every year about practical precautions to increase their safety.

Mr. Speaker, once again, I express my support for National Campus Safety Awareness Month and thank Representative Sestak for bringing this resolution forward. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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