Thread by @MCarletonOhio

The 2016 Clery Handbook just got rescinded. ifap.ed.gov/electronic-ann… #Clery #TitleIX #highered Shall we peruse the replacement?

The announcement says the Handbook "created additional requirements and expanded the scope of the statute and regulations." ED says they are concerned "some institutions may have felt pressured to satisfy the non-regulatory or non-statutory based aspects of the guidance..." 👀

Check out their description of your Annual Security Report (which isn't due until 12/31, btw):

Clery Geography: "the Department will no longer apply any specific measurable distance definition to 'reasonably contiguous' geographic area." Also removes the definitions of "owned or controlled by" and "directly supports"

The announcement says it has "addressed the issues identified in the above-referenced Senate Report regarding reporting crimes that occur during institution sponsored stay-away trips..." Be still my beating heart. Hold on - let me scope this out...

Here is a link to that Senate Report: help.senate.gov/imo/media/Regu…

And here is the snip from that Report:

And... the new appendix says nothing about trips, so looks like that just went poof.

They are not happy with the illustrations in Chapter 2 of the 2016 Handbook re: geography, as they "may create more confusion than they resolve."

Now crime definitions need to come from the regulatory sources, not the Handbook. Now that we've all spent time digging into some of those for #TitleIX policy writing, we can all cozy up to NIBRS even more now. But, confusingly, the regs refer to SRS, which is on its way out.

(Literally - OCR put up a blog about the whole SRS/NIBRS transition yesterday: www2.ed.gov/about/offices/…)

They say that the changes will also pare down who is a CSA to people who actually have a "significant responsibility for student and campus activities." Time to revisit those policies and retrain.

The new appendix says, "The Department will defer to an institution's designation of CSAs as authoritative," so there's that.

The notice about the new appendix ends with the reassuring sentence, "None of the changes in the Appendix impact the July 10, 2020 temporary extension (to December 31, 2020) that the Department provided, regarding Clery reporting due to COVID-19."

So - time to revise your annual security report now, before December 31st?

My hot take (which will evolve as I dig in more, I'm sure) - this will take some extra obligations away, but it also takes away some guidance that was actually helpful to understand how the Department was interpreting things. If this means more deference to schools, great.

If it means that the "real" rules for interpretation are a mystery until you violate them... Well, I hope that's not where we're landing when there is a $55k fine at stake. Fingers crossed.

PS - The Handbook rescission may be my fault. I finally printed myself a hard copy yesterday, and with 2020 karma, maybe this was bound to happen. 🤣