U.S. Department of Education Amends Clery Act

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education published its finalized amendments to the Clery Act, which mandates that colleges collect and publish annual crime and fire safety statistics.

The Clery Act amendments are part of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, which intends to improve the criminal justice response to sexual crimes against women. Earlier this year, the Clery Act added three new categories of reporting: domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. The recent Department of Education amendments, published in the Federal Register, aim to clarify these additions.

The amendments require universities that receive federal funding, including Harvard, to report statistics not only on crimes they investigated and prosecuted but also for crimes determined as unfounded, which universities were not previously required to report.

In addition, the changes also give more attention to stalking and dating violence by requiring reports of stalking to include information about the location where the stalking first began.

"These new rules require institutions to ensure that students and employees have vital information about crime on campus and the services and protections available to victims if a crime does occur, which will be significant assets in addressing the growing problems of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking on our nation's campuses," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a press release.

The new regulations will go into effect on July 1, 2015.

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.