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"   Odds are, you&amp;#039;ve heard plenty about the Penn State sex abuse scandal. But you probably didn&amp;#039;t think it affected you (except to leave you feeling completely disgusted).  But one major element of the scandal has big implications for women on college campuses across the country. As the recent Freeh report on the scandal determined, Penn State officials looked the other way when they were informed about sex abuse allegations on campus\u2014and that&amp;#039;s a direct violation of the Clery Act. Okay, we&amp;#039;ll back up: The Clery Act is a federal statute that was enacted in 1990 that requires all colleges and universities to maintain a public log of all crimes reported to them. Each entry must contain the nature of the crime (robbery, murder, rape, sexual assault, etc.), the date and time it occurred, and the location of the crime. The act was created by the parents of Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman, who was raped and murdered in her dorm in 1986. Its goal is to inform prospective students of the dangers they might face when they apply for schools, explains former New York City prosecutor Linda Fairstein, best-selling author of the new crime thriller Night Watch. Many schools fudge their crime numbers, says Fairstein, because they don&amp;#039;t want to seem like unsafe places to live and go to school. &amp;quot;There has been a very serious problem with many schools that have never complied with the legislation,&amp;quot; she says. Under the act, the government will withholding funding from schools who don&amp;#039;t report all crimes, but it&amp;#039;s difficult to enforce.  Fairstein also says many schools will try to discourage young women in sexual assault cases from going to the police\u2014and will then list a rape as a less scary-sounding &amp;quot;sexual harassment&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;misconduct&amp;quot; case. If you or a friend have been a victim of a crime on campus, contact campus authorities as well as the local police. If a campus official discourages you from contacting the local authorities, reach out to someone higher up on campus (the dean of student affairs, for example), to report that person. Fairstein is working with risk mitigators Kroll Advisory Solutions to try to make campuses a safer place for women. If you need help or want to report violations to the Clery Act, please click here to email her. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a10393/penn-state-clery-act/>