Skip to main content

Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act

The federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act) requires colleges and universities, both public and private, participating in federal student aid programs to disclose campus safety information, and imposes certain basic requirements for handling incidents of sexual violence and emergency situations. Disclosures about crime statistics and summaries of security policies are made once a year in an Annual Security Report (ASR), and information about specific crimes and emergencies is made publicly available on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

The Clery Act is named in memory of Jeanne Clery who was raped and murdered in her residence hall room by a fellow student she did not know on April 5, 1986. Her parents championed laws requiring the disclosure of campus crime information, and the federal law that now bears their daughter's name was first enacted in 1990. It has been amended regularly over the last two decades to keep up with changes in campus safety with the most recent update in 2013 to expand the law's requirements concerning the handling of sexual violence via the re-authorization of the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act in 2014.

For more details on the Clery Act, see https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/offices/campus-safety/offices-campus-safety-records-reports