EDITORIAL: A step in the right direction

The new federal campus crime bill provides a better definition of crime on urban campus. And that might make urban universities like Penn a little nervous. For years, a mishmash of vague and inconsistent federal laws has allowed Penn and other urban universities to substantially underreport the number of crimes that most reasonable people would say had occurred on-campus. And although the new law doesn't resolve all of the tricky questions inherent in any attempt to classify an urban university into simple categories of on- and off-campus, it is a significant improvement over existing laws. The old law defined campus as "property owned or controlled by an institution within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area and used by the institution in direct support of, or in a matter related to, the institution's educational purpose." In practice, the law meant that campus buildings, like the Quadrangle, were considered on-campus. The sidewalks and streets adjacent to such University buildings, however, were technically off-campus, as were campus retail establishments -- like Allegro Pizza, for example -- that served a predominantly student clientele. Confused? So were many critics of the law -- such as Security on Campus Inc., a non-profit advocacy group -- who argued that schools like Penn were exploiting the law's loopholes and failing to follow the spirit of the legislation. The issue came to a head last year, when the U.S. Department of Education conducted a year-long probe of Penn's crime-reporting procedures. The investigation was prompted, in part, by newspaper reports that only about 10 percent of the crimes reported to University Police were classified as having occurred on campus. The probe found minor infractions, although it cleared the University of the most serious charge against it -- illegally conspiring to systematically underreport campus crime. But still the loopholes remained. Until now. The new bill should close many of the existing loopholes, forcing colleges and universities to play by the rules for the first time. First, the legislation broadens the definition of on-campus to include properties serving students, like restaurants or retail outlets, which are "owned by the institution but controlled by another person." The legalese has a fairly simple meaning -- it will now be illegal for Penn to argue, for example, that a pickpocketting inside the Cinemagic movie theater had occurred off-campus. The bill goes even further, creating two new subcategories of what would commonly be regarded as campus, but had not been part of the existing legislation. Crimes occurring in areas falling under either of the two new categories -- "noncampus" buildings owned by student groups recognized by an institution, like Greek chapter houses; or "public property" like any streets and sidewalks near campus buildings -- must now be included as part of a school's annual crime statistics. Why should you care? Loopholes like those in the old bill had long allowed universities to mislead parents, students and prospective students about the true state of security on their campuses. Nevertheless, the bill does not go far enough in clarifying the differences between rural and suburban campuses with defined boundaries and urban campuses without. That issue warrants further investigation This page has long advocated that the DOE devise a classfication system that distinguishes between rural, suburban and urban schools. Doing so would allow annual crime statistics to compare schools in similar environments. No bill is perfect, of course, and skillful administrators can probably find loopholes in this legislation as well. But with crime plummeting on our campus in the last two years, the University should embrace the new law instead of trying to find ways around it. An honest response to the new law will put Penn's security officials in the vanguard of reporting campus crime in much the same way as they have been in the vanguard of fighting it. After all, integrity -- and now the law -- will allow for nothing less.