University of California at Santa Cruz is among a half-dozen California colleges that a new state audit found inaccurately reported violent crime on campus, leaving students misinformed about their safety.
This week’s report from the California State Auditor said California State University Chico, Imperial Valley College, Mount Saint Mary’s University, Orange Coast College, and the University of San Diego also had failed to comply with the Clery Act’s requirements for safety policies and crime reporting.
UC Santa Cruz, which serves more than 19,400 students, was found to have underreported crimes, failed to disclose campus safety procedures and had incomplete crime logs for its 2022 statistics.
Scott Hernandez-Jason, UC Santa Cruz’s Assistant Vice Chancellor for Communications and Marketing, said the university appreciates the “thoughtful and constructive” recommendations included in the state report.
“We are always working to promote a safe environment for everyone in our campus community,” Hernandez-Jason said. “We are eager to implement these recommendations and staff members are already working to improve the transparency of our public safety information and compliance with the Clery Act. We are committed to continuous improvement and creating a campus environment that promotes safety for all.”
The Clery Act — enacted in 1990 — was named after Jeanne Clery, a freshman at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University who was raped and killed in her college dorm. At the time, there were no established standards for crime reporting and it wasn’t until after Clery’s murder that her parents learned there had been 38 violent crimes on the campus in the three years before her death.
The Clery Act requires colleges and universities that receive federal financial aid to record and report campus crime data — including violent crimes, hate crimes, criminal offenses like robbery, arson and sexual assault, and arrests involving weapons, drug and alcohol violations.
The California State Auditor reviews a few schools’ compliance with the Clery Act every three years, and has consistently found noncompliance with the law’s requirements.
Noncompliance with the Clery Act can lead to fines from the U.S. Department of Education of up to $70,000 per violation. In 2020, the Department of Education fined UC Berkeley $2.35 million for violating the Clery Act. The department’s review of Berkeley found that among other violations, the university didn’t report hate crimes or disclose security policies.
The new State Auditor report found that UC Santa Cruz did not track its Clery-reportable incidents in a central location, leading to the university underreporting 33 crimes, including multiple instances of violent crimes such as dating violence, domestic battery and rape.
“By not including these serious crimes in its Clery statistics as required, Santa Cruz presented its campus as safer than it was,” the audit said.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, UC Santa Cruz recorded 17 reports of rape on campus for 2022 and 13 burglaries. San Jose State University and UC Berkeley, which each serve more than 35,000 students, recorded 28 reports of rape on campus.
The report blamed the university’s lack of written procedures for compiling data and departure of its Clery coordinator in 2022 as two of the reasons the university failed to accurately report crime statistics. The report also found the university did not renew its agreement with the campus police department due to the pandemic and former police chief’s retirement, which could have led to some of the errors.
The report included several recommendations for the university, including strengthening procedures, streamlining staff responsibilities and implementing regular trainings. According to the report, UC Santa Cruz said its staff is working on revising the university’s 2022 Clery statistics to resubmit them to the Department of Education, auditing its Clery Act processes and entering into a newly signed agreement with the university’s current campus police chief.
But UC Santa Cruz is not alone in its failure to accurately report campus crime. Over the past 21 years, the State Auditor has found noncompliance with Clery Act requirements at 41 California schools, the report said.
The State Auditor report said schools’ lack of comprehensive policies and gaps in Clery Act disclosures is “particularly concerning” because the policies are necessary to help institutions respond quickly and consistently to campus emergencies and crimes.
To address this concern, the California State Auditor recommended the Legislature require all schools and universities subject to the Clery Act undergo regular reviews of their compliance with the law and publish the results online.
Mike Fong, Chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and representative of Alhambra, said he is committed to protecting campus communities from all forms of violence.
“My office will examine the State Auditor’s recommendation and evaluate options available to the Legislature to improve compliance at California’s higher education institutions,” Fong said.
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