Congress gave final approval last week to a bill that would require colleges to tell students how they can learn the identities of any “registered sex offenders” who are working or studying on those campuses.
The measure is part of broader legislation that would, among other things, authorize $50-million in grants to colleges over five years to help them prevent violent crimes against women on their campuses. President Clinton has said he will sign the bill into law.
The legislation would require each college to disclose -- in the annual crime reports that it files with the federal government and makes available on the campus -- where students can go to find out if individuals who have been convicted of sex offenses are enrolled or have jobs on the campus.
States would be required to keep track of whether registered sex offenders become employed by or take classes at higher-education institutions, and would be responsible for passing that information on to campus or local police departments. The police officers would then be required to disseminate the information on request.
The requirements would go into effect in 2002.
S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, a nonprofit watchdog group that has promoted the legislation, applauded Congress. “Students will now be better equipped to protect themselves from sexual predators,” he said.
College lobbyists are pleased that the sex-offender provision is less burdensome to colleges than an earlier version, which was included in a bill to make technical changes in the 1998 Higher Education Act, approved by the House of Representatives in June. Under that bill, which does not appear to be headed for passage in this Congressional session, colleges would have been required to make known on their campuses the identities of students and employees who are “registered sex offenders.”
Although the requirement was meant to protect college communities, higher-education groups complained that it would have been left up to colleges to determine whether students and employees were sex offenders. That responsibility, they said, would have imposed a significant administrative and financial burden, forcing administrators to match databases of students and employees against those of all of the states in which each of those people had lived. That would have been a particular challenge for institutions that enroll students from around the country, college lobbyists said.
Staff members in the office of Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, worked closely with the higher-education associations to make the sex-offender provision in the Violence Against Women Act more palatable to colleges. The staff members clarified that responsibility for collecting the data on sex offenders fell to the states, not to colleges. Mr. Kyl included the newly worded provision in the Senate version of the act, and the House later adopted it.
“Everyone has a common interest in providing a means for students of getting this information, if they are willing to pursue it,” said Becky Timmons, director of government relations at the American Council on Education. “But it often takes a lot of work to turn good intentions into workable legislation.”
The bill would authorize grants to colleges from the Justice Department to train campus administrators and security personnel to more effectively identify and respond to violent crimes against women on campuses, including instances of sexual assault and stalking.
Colleges could also use the grants to develop or strengthen campus counseling and support services for women who have been victims of violent crimes.
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A35