Four Oklahoma colleges left off of new Web site despite compliance

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Oklahoma colleges have complied with a new law requiring them to provide campus crime statistics for a U.S.

Department of Education Web site, but four of them have found not all of the data is on display.

Officials with the four colleges -- Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Northeastern State University and Hillsdale Freewill Baptist College -- reported providing copies of verifications sent by the Education Department after the Oct. 24 deadline.

But they learned that despite the confirmations sent, the data was not on the new Web site.

"I'm flabbergasted," Sharon Berish, vice president of student affairs at Southeastern Oklahoma told The Daily Oklahoman. "It makes me wonder how many (reports) aren't getting on. If we had to do all this work, I certainly want the public to see it."

Failure to meet the deadline could cost an institution a $25,000 fine.

This year is the first time some 6,000 colleges and universities across the country are required to provide crime statistics for the Web site. The institutions are required to report all incidences of criminal homicide, manslaughter, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, vehicle theft and arson.

The statistics also must include arrests for illegal weapons possession, and liquor and drug law violations, including the number of persons referred for campus disciplinary action for these violations. In a separate category, the colleges must report hate crimes.

Education Department officials could not be reached for comment about the glitches affecting the four Oklahoma colleges. But in a statement sent via e-mail, David Bergeron, an agency policy chief, acknowledged a backlog in updating the Web site.

"In most cases, the lack of crime statistics relates to institutions that we have not yet moved from the data collection site to the data display site," Bergeron said. "We have about 1,000 institutions to move from the data collection site to the display site."

Southeastern Oklahoma and Northwestern Oklahoma both succeeded in getting through to the Education Department and getting the data placed online.

The requirements stem from the 1998 Jeanne Cleary Act, an update of legislation Howard Cleary pushed through Congress in 1990 in response to his daughter's 1986 murder at Lehigh University.

Cleary and his wife, Connie, chose Lehigh University over Tulane University in New Orleans after learning of three murders at the latter college.

The Clearys didn't know that Lehigh, in Bethlehem, Pa., had been the site of 38 violent offenses, including rape, robbery and assault, in a three-year period. Their 19-year-old daughter was raped and murdered in her dorm room on April 5, 1986.

Joseph M. Henry was arrested and sentenced to death for her slaying. The Clearys filed a $25 million lawsuit against the college for negligence, and then launched Security on Campus Inc.

Their lobbying convinced Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey in May 1988 to sign the first bill requiring all colleges and universities in his state to publish three years worth of campus crime statistics.

Then-President George Bush signed a similar federal bill, the Student Right-To-Know and Campus Security Act, into law on November 8, 1990. The 1998 amendments formally renamed it in memory of Jeanne Cleary and established the new Web site.

Howard Cleary III, treasurer for Security on Campus, said he hopes the amended act will close the loopholes by requiring a school to compile a report using incidents reported to all authorities -- police, security, even residential supervisors.

------ On the Internet: www.ope.ed.gov/security