Clery Act

I want to start this month’s report by briefly going over the Clery Act. Bucknell, like many other institutions of higher education, must comply with the Clery Act. The Clery Act requires us to disclose information about certain criminal offenses and fire safety on an annual basis. This federal law is named after Jeanne Clery, a student who was raped and murdered on a college campus in 1986. By Oct. 1 of every year, we must disseminate an Annual Security Report. On an annual basis, we send out via the Message Center an announcement that we have completed and released our report. At Bucknell, we combine the Annual Security Report with the required Annual Fire Report to create the Annual Security & Fire Report (ASFR). We encourage you to visit our webpage to learn more. There are four distinct features the act requires us to comply with:

1. Crime categories: One of the unique features of the Clery Act is that federal definitions of Clery crimes may differ from state-level definitions. For example, under hate crimes, the Clery Act includes the offenses of simple assault and vandalism of property. In Pennsylvania, those offenses under state law are called harassment and criminal mischief. I share that because we are required to put out a daily crime log. In this log, we use the state’s terminology for offenses that meet the legal equivalent of a Clery offense — they are just titled differently. So you may see an offense on our log that is different from what I am listing below. We include the following categories of crimes in our ASFR.

Criminal Offenses

• Criminal homicide: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, manslaughter by negligence
• Sexual assault: rape, fondling, incest, statutory rape
• Robbery
• Aggravated assault
• Burglary
• Motor vehicle theft
• Arson
• Hate crimes (any of the above mentioned offenses, and any incidents of)
• Larceny-theft
• Simple assault
• Intimidation
• Destruction/damage/vandalism of property

Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Offenses

• Domestic violence
• Dating violence
• Stalking

Arrests and Referrals for Disciplinary Action

• Weapons law violations
• Drug abuse violations
• Liquor law violations

2. Clery geography. A common question we are asked is what is included in the Clery geography? We include in our ASFR any crimes that occur within the following geographic area:

• On-campus (anywhere)
• Public property within campus bounds (Borough controlled streets and sidewalks as an example Moore Ave and parts of 7th Street.
• Public property immediately adjacent to the campus ( As an example the cemetery located behind the Smith Parking lot)
• Non-campus buildings and property owned or controlled by the organization that are used for educational purposes and frequently used by students but not a part of the core campus, or those owned or controlled by a student organization officially recognized by the institution

We have the primary law enforcement responsibility for campus and University owned or leased properties. To ensure we are accurately capturing everything, I send a letter on an annual basis to the chief of Buffalo Valley Regional Police and to the State Police to see if they responded to any Clery-reportable violations within the geographic area mentioned above.

3. Rave system. We utilize the Rave system to provide emergency or timely warning information to the campus community. We test the system once each semester. That test includes a phone call, text message, email and a test of our two loudspeakers. The Clery Act requires us to issue a timely warning or emergency notification to the campus community as warranted by facts. When a crime covered by the Clery Act occurs, campus officials are required to evaluate if there is a serious or ongoing threat to the campus community to determine if a timely warning needs to be issued to all staff and students. In the event of an immediate, significant danger to the health or safety campus community (e.g. weather, disease outbreak, etc.), campus officials may issue an emergency notification. This notification can include the entire campus or be limited to a specific area deemed to be at risk. 

4. Victim’s rights, options and resources. Finally, our Clery report contains information on Victims Rights, Options and Resources. We encourage you to visit our webpage to learn more.

In May, we plan to release the 2024 ASFR, which will report on offenses for the 2023 calendar year.. I want to thank the members of our Clery Committee for their work: Michael Melnyk, Interim Associate Dean of Conduct; Christina Wallace, Director of Executive & Internal Communications; Debbie Hirsh, Graphic Designer; Samantha Hart, Director of Employee Experience, Culture & Title IX Coordinator; Kristen Gibson, Associate Director, Interpersonal Violence Prevention & Advocacy; and Jamie Grobes, Assistant Director, Community Engagement & Partnerships.

Warning to Students about Sexual Extortion

Over the last couple of semesters, we have received reports and investigated incidents of students being victimized by sexual extortion. We strongly discourage you from sending nude images or videos to anyone. Once you send the image and the recipient demands money not to release it, or you have paid the recipient to prevent them releasing the images or video, the crime of sexual extortion has occurred. We can write search warrants to try and get IP address information and obtain the identity of the offender, but it is just a good idea never to send these types of images in the first place. It is extremely hard to remove something from the internet once it is there. We cannot stress enough the importance of not sending images to someone you have not met, let alone to someone you do know. If this is happening to you, please contact us.

Parking

We are already at 31 tows as of Feb. 22. As a reminder, first-year students are not allowed to bring a car to campus, and there are no exceptions. We remind everyone to please stay alert to campus notices of lot closures or construction during spring break and other times during this semester. We encourage anyone parking in the Borough to pay attention to all signage and information on the Borough website.

Fraud

This is the time of year when students seek internships and those graduating are looking for employment or enrolling in graduate school. Please remember that if you get an email about an amazing internship or job that asks for your Social Security number or bank account information up-front, it is a scam. We remind everyone in our community to be cautious when responding to emails that ask for personal information. Please use links below to review information on this issue.

Hey college students: have you seen this scam? | Consumer Advice (ftc.gov)

Beware of Scams targeting College and Graduate Students – PA Office of Attorney General

Public Safety End-of-year Report

Please use this link to view our 2023 report.