If you believe that your college or university has violated the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, the agency charged with implementing it, the U.S. Department of Education, has established a procedure for complaints to be filed and investigated. This is an administrative process and not a legal one therefore while you can use the services of an attorney, that is not required.
While there is not a specific form that the complaint must take, it will aid in the investigation if specific details are provided and they are associated with the specific regulatory violations being alleged.
SOC can assist you free of charge with filing a complaint if you wish. Please contact us toll-free at 1-888-251-7959 or by e-mail at cleryact@securityoncampus.org.
Obtain a copy of the institution's crime security disclosures. All current students and employees are to be provided a copy of these disclosures automatically by October 1st of each year. Prospective students and employees are to be informed of the availability of these disclosures and are to be provided with them upon request. Other individuals, such as the parent of a student, are not required to be provided with the disclosures but the school may make them available upon request. Schools may make their disclosures on the world wide web so long as paper copies are made available upon request and the school notifies students and employees of the exact address the disclosures are made at.
Review the disclosures to verify that all required crime statistical disclosures and security policies are present. A list of each of the regulatory requirements is posted on our web site at http://www.securityoncampus.org/schools/cleryact/checklist.html. This list clearly outlines what must be disclosed and which specific regulatory requirement (by section) provides for it.
If statistical or policy disclosures are missing, record these violations by their regulatory citation. It is also important to verify whether or not the disclosed policies are in fact routine practice at the school, if not that is also a violation of the Act.
The Act also provides that certain rights are to be accorded to survivors of sexual assaults on campus. If a survivor has not been accorded these rights, and or the school does not have appropriate policies in place, the institution is in violation of the Act.
While it may not be possible to verify that the statistical disclosures include every covered incident for the required reporting periods, if you have knowledge of incidents that have been omitted from the disclosures compile all available evidence of these incidents or incident. Also if you can obtain an accounting of each specific incident used to arrive at the disclosed statistics this will be helpful and will verify whether or not the incident(s) you have knowledge of were included or not.
Compile each of the regulatory violations into a list and forward it to the appropriate regional office of the U.S. Department of Education for the state in which the specific school is located. The complaint will be handled by the Case Management Team within that regional office. A list of the various regional offices, and which states they have jurisdiction for, can be found on our web site at http://www.ed.gov/about/contacts/gen/regions.html.
You can also call 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) to lodge your complaint.
The U.S. Department of Education has established the following procedure for the filing of complaints:
The DOE Regional Office should provide you with an acknowledgment of your letter, but we would recommend that you send your complaint by certified-return receipt requested postal mail or by other means which provide some form of tracking procedure.
Even though you will be the complainant in the DOE's investigation, you will need to file what is known as a Freedom Of Information Act request to obtain copies of all subsequent documentation including a copy of their initial inquiry of the "participating institution."
The "Program Review" documentation will be a matter of public record under the Federal FOIA law, but the complainant is not named in this document because the action is an administrative review of statutory compliance.
Depending upon the degree of non-compliance found during the initial review, the DOE may perform a "Program Review" on the institution's compliance with the Jeanne Clery Act. They may also perform a less intensive informal review. Depending upon which process is used, the investigation may be concluded in just a few weeks or could last more than a year.
DISCLAIMER: While this page contains a discussion of general legal principles and specific laws, it is neither intended to be given as legal advice nor as the practice of law, and should not be relied upon by readers as such.