How Campus Safety notes serve you

Most readers of The Weekly pick up a copy and immediately flip to the Campus Safety Notes on page four, where we transcribe incidents responded to by Campus Safety Officers from the previous week. If you picked up last week’s issue you may have noticed a report on an assault involving a knife that was never reported to Campus Safety Notes. The Weekly looked into why this is and what makes the Campus Safety Notes.

Our Campus Safety Notes are published largely thanks to the Clery Act. The federal law is designed to provide transparency to students, faculty and staff of the crimes handled by a Campus Safety Officer.

A large aspect of the Clery Act is Annual Security Reporting. A college or university campus safety office must report statistics of all campus crimes for the previous three calendar years to both the institution and its employees and students as well as the federal government. Along with these, they must also report school policies on such things as sexual assault, crime reporting, drug and alcohol abuse, among others. Muhlenberg’s Campus Safety Office also uses The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting when responding to and informing the campus community of incidents. For those curious, a copy of the book can be found with a simple web search. A part of this handbook requires Campus Safety to keep a crime log that is available to anyone upon request.

According to this handbook and the Clery Act, there are certain incidents that require an immediate notification of the campus community. These include: murder, sex offenses, robbery, assault, motor vehicle theft and arson among others. The notifications are sent out in an email known as an emergency notification.

Director of Campus Safety and Chief of Campus Police Brian Fidati explained that in each email they send out there is an intention “to inform and educate.” Emails include relevant information about the crime in addition to suggestions of how to stay safe.

“If there were a couple reports of cars being broken into we would send that out along with suggestions of keeping

doors locked and valuables out of sight,” said Fidati.

Fidati also explained that there are differences between an emergency notification and a timely warning. Timely warnings may occur if one of the Clery-identified crimes occur, either on or off campus. Given the fictional example of bike thefts that may be happening in the surrounding neighborhood, Campus Safety would respond by sending out a timely warning to inform students of the possibility of the crime spreading and occurring on campus.

There are times, however, when Campus Safety does not issue an emergency alert. Fidati explained it as any time the emergency alert could have a negative impact or is “cognizant of an ongoing investigation and would be jeopardizing ongoing investigations by releasing information prematurely.”

As to how emergency alerts are published, Fidati said it was largely based on the handbook as well as conferring with the College’s Public Relations department and the Dean of Students. They base it on certain categories as well as the severity. Fidati stated that “if there’s immediate action and the threat is eliminated or it involves an ongoing investigation then there is no need to unnecessarily alarm the community.”

Recalling the incident on Jan. 28 in which a student threatened a fellow student with a knife that was not reported to the College community, Fidati explained that this does not constitute as domestic violence, defining domestic violence as “two people that reside together.” He elaborated that this includes not just two persons who may be in a romantic relationship, but also familial relationships, such as siblings.

The incident was part of an ongoing investigation and also did not fulfill requirements for an emergency alert; thus the College decided not to broadcast a message to the campus community.