Lehigh University - The Clery Act

The Clery Act

On April 5, 1986, a 19-year-old Lehigh freshman was raped and murdered in her dorm room; the perpetrator was apprehended, tried and sentenced to death. The backlash against unreported crimes on numerous campuses across the country led to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The Clery Act requires that colleges reveal information regarding crime on their campuses. As a result, Lehigh takes campus security very seriously. Readers Digest ranked Lehigh as one of the country’s safest college campuses in 2008, giving it the top grade of “A”.

Twenty years after the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act took effect, the nation’s most prominent thought leaders on campus safety came to Lehigh to discuss critical safety issues for colleges and universities. The event, "Proceeding in Partnership: The Future of Campus Safety,” was held on the Lehigh campus in September 2011, and was co-sponsored by Security on Campus (SOC), which was founded by Connie and Howard Clery following the death of their daughter, Jeanne Clery. The conference represented the first cooperative effort between Lehigh and the organization since Jeanne Clery’s death.