Schools must also encourage students to reportto their colleges any concerns they have aboutcrime and any crime they may themselves see.
Overall compliance with the law, reflected inthe number of institutions that explicitly reportand compile the crime statistics as Congressintended--varies substantially, several nationalstudies have concluded.
In 1996, Chunmeng Lu, a political scientist atthe University of Cincinnati, sent out requestsfor the federally-required security statistics tomore than 780 colleges and universities.
Lu and his colleagues found that only 37percent of the colleges sent them the legallyrequired information. 15 percent did not evenrespond to his request.
Of the nearly 85 percent of schools that Lusome of the literature he requested, the mix ofbrochures and pamphlets from more than 50 percentof the colleges did not constitute fullcompliance.
Lu's conclusion to the study, published in1997, found that compliance nationwide was highlyvariable.
The national studies have postulated variousreasons as to why the laws have not beeneffective.
At first glance, many institutions,particularly those located in high-crime areas,may be afraid of the adverse publicity that theircrime statistics may invite.
But Lu and his colleagues reach anotherconclusion, blaming non-compliance on the DOE'sfailure to ask the schools to open their books.
"It could be the case that [DOE] programreviewers of the institution are not requestingthe security reports on a regular basis, so thereare few benefits for schools to take the time andmoney (especially since the Security Act is anunfunded mandate) to develop a security report,"he wrote.
Indeed, Secretary of Education Richard J.Reilly has complained to Congress that successiveHigher Education Acts have become increasinglymore complex, which makes it more difficult forthe DOE to fully enforce the letter of the crimestatistics laws.
But bloated bureaucracy may be only partiallyto blame.
A 1997 General Accounting Office study notedthat the DOE did not even write the regulations to1990's Campus Security Act until 1995 and onlyissued them in 1996.
"Until this recent incorporation of campussecurity in program review guidance, [the DOE's]program reviewers had not emphasized themonitoring of campus crime reports...in their[reviews of compliance with the Higher EducationAct of 1965,]" the GAO report noted.
Lobbying Push
In recent years, several major nationallobbying organizations have arisen to combat thealleged improprieties in