This two posts in a day business from me is getting a little out of hand, but this is extremely notable, exciting news.
Dominican College in New York has agreed to pay $20,000 in a settlement with the state’s attorney general over charges that the private institution misreported statistics related to sexual assaults on its campus.
According to a statement released by the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, an investigation into Dominican’s crime statistics revealed that “over the course of several years, Dominican had erroneously reported the number of crimes that occurred on campus in their student handbook” and that “Dominican did not have adequate procedures in place to ensure accurate reporting.” The settlement language highlights Dominican’s violations of state fraud law and makes clear the agreement is being set in place to avoid litigation.
Cuomo’s investigaton was prompted by the alleged 2006 rape of Domincan freshman Megan Wright, and her subsequent suicide seven months later. Ashley wrote about this case last year, when Wright’s family sued the school and local police for $10 million in punitive damages for their egregious mishandling of Wright’s case (read Ashley’s post for the full details—the “investigation” was horrible and Wright was given no support). The family’s case is still ongoing, but the lawyer for the Wright family was the one who “called on the attorney general to investigate the college’s crime statistics after identifying a suspicious lack of reported sexual assaults during the time Wright was a student.”
Indeed it was found that the school had misrepresented their crime statistics in student handbooks (though not in their federal reports). Dominican’s lawyer maintains that the errors were he errors were “inadvertent,” and that “there was no intent found by the attorney general.”
Regardless of intent, Cuomo is clearly making an example out of the school.
In addition to the $20,000 fine, Cuomo has instructed that Dominican make several changes to its crime reporting procedures…
- Require all employees responsible for campus security to attend a training program regarding crime reporting issues including the classification and definition of crimes, the collection of crime reports, timely warning requirements and annual disclosure requirements.
- Designate officials to oversee and coordinate the collection of all campus crime reports to ensure that they are properly categorized and maintained to create an accurate crime report.
- Designate officials to ensure that crime statistics are accurately published in the annual campus crime report.
- Designate an official who is responsible for ensuring that grievance procedures are in place for students.
…In addition to fining Domincan, Cuomo also issued a letter last week to every college in the state of New York urging a prompt review of all crime reporting procedures and warning that “[f]ailure to report campus crime statistics accurately — including the number, location or nature of reported crimes — may also constitute fraud under New York State law.”
This settlement has a number of important implications. For one thing, as Allred and Executive Director of Security on Campus Jonathan Kassa note, it should act as a reminder to all schools that they must strictly comply to the Clery Act—the federal law requiring colleges to disclose accurate crime statistics to the government, as well as students and parents. However, the Dominican case introduces the possibility of finding schools who do not sufficiently report crime statistics as being in violation of state law—specifically state fraud laws. Opening up this new avenue for prosecution strengthens our ability to hold schools accountable for providing students with accurate information meant to help to keep them safe. With that transparency, hopefully students will be prompted to have more discussions about violence on campus and work to make change. Furthermore, as Kassa points out, punishing schools for their failures lets students know that someone is on their side.
Kassa said these mandatory administrative changes — which promote a kind of top-down self-governance of crime reporting procedures — are part of the solution, but this “landmark” settlement might also encourage change from the ground up by way of more victims stepping forward and breaking a culture of silence.
“Victims have felt that they’re not listened to,” he said. “It’s a very strong signal that victims will be listened to and something will be done about it. We’re not just talking about using the state fraud laws as strategy [to require accurate reporting], but it extends to the students and families … the confidence and opportunity to actually take part in holding colleges accountable.”
