As September comes to a close, so does National Campus Safety Awareness Month—but that certainly doesn’t mean the conversation should.
In fact, as we’ve highlighted throughout the month, the topic of safety and risk management within the classroom, on campus and even during field trips or travels is one that we should focus on year-round.
From students to faculty and staff, the most important aspect of running an educational institution is ultimately insuring the safety and well-being of your campus community.
As the Clery Center notes, campuses must outline specific policies and procedures within their annual security reports, including those related to disseminating timely warnings, emergency notifications and much more. It’s these kind of measures that help reinforce a proactive approach toward campus safety
Additionally, The Department of Education’s Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting provides a wealth of information and compliance requirements for schools on this very topic.
Some important safety compliance requirements to note include:
- Collect, classify and count crime reports and crime statistics
- If your institution maintains a campus police or security department, you must keep a daily crime log of alleged criminal incidents that is open to public inspection
- If your institution has any on-campus student housing facilities, you must disclose missing student notification procedures that pertain to students residing in those facilities and disclose fire safety information related to those facilities
- Issue campus alerts
- Provide educational programs and campaigns to promote the awareness of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking
- Have procedures for institutional disciplinary action in cases of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking
- Publish an annual security report
There’s certainly a lot more to this list, but hopefully this will encourage you to look into your own institution’s current practices and policies related to campus safety. Obviously, remaining compliant with these types of safety rules and regulations are a requirement, but more so, they layout a framework that should reinforce a proactive, best practices approach toward campus risk management.
To this point, our commitment is to support schools—and this goes far beyond campus safety tips. We aim to provide comprehensive, high-quality support that ensures the long-term well-being and future of educational institutions.
With this in mind, we will continue to discuss various topics related to issues and concerns schools may face on a daily basis within this blog, and we encourage you to subscribe to keep up with our latest posts.
We would love to continue this conversation with you if you have any questions or if you need additional resources to support your own campus safety initiative.
Until then, let’s remember to #BCampusSafe!
