Throughout the fall term, University of Oregon students and community members received nearly 14 UO Crime Alerts from the UO Police Department via email. The university is required to disclose campus crime activities because of the Clery Act.
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Crime Statistics Act is a federal law requiring colleges and universities in the United States to disclose campus crime statistics and security information.
The Clery Act was enacted after a young woman named Jeanne Clery was sexually assaulted and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. Following her death, Clery’s parents lobbied with the United States Congress to require universities to disclose any safety and criminal activity to prevent similar crimes from happening on a university campus.
According to UO Clery Coordinator Shelly Clark, she has worked at the university for nearly four years and holds the responsibility of touching base with students to understand their comfortability levels while living in the residence halls.
“There’s the people part of University Housing which is everyone living in the halls, and you’re kind of figuring out who they are and how they get along with their roommate and what kind of events they want to go to,” Clark said.
UOPD Chief Jason Wade said the UO Crime Alerts are specified based on the location and severity of the threat on campus.
Wade also said that this alert system is updated as often as possible but there sometimes could be “delays” with communicating information to the public.
“That (sending out UO Crime Alerts) process still takes someone to either open up their computer, turn on their computer, type out the message and hit the send button,” Wade said. “So there’s a bit of (a) delay that can sometimes occur between when they (UOPD) get the information to when they can send it out.”
These alerts have been a part of UO campus since 1991, around a year after the Clery Act was passed and when UO made the bulk of their changes to their systems in order to accommodate the Clery Act.
“UO has been sending crime alerts and information directly to campus community members via email since 1991, when the Clery Act was put into practice here. Notification methods have evolved with the tools available to send them.” Eric Howald said.
UO student Edan Resendiz said that she’s had a positive experience with UO Crime Alerts, mostly experiencing the extent of these alerts by email.
But Resendiz also said she feels that it may be easier and more efficient to send the alerts as a DUO Push notification, a security feature of the DUO Mobile application.
“To my current knowledge, our school sends them (UO Crime Alerts) out in an email form. I think them being a push notification and/or something that can be quicker to access would be more beneficial,” Resendiz said.
Resendiz said she sometimes felt the information in the alerts were lacking specific details or important information.
“I don’t remember getting any kind of information about the druggings happening at the frat (houses)…, just hearing it from multiple different people,” Resendiz said.
Similar to Resendiz, UO student Ivan Biskis said the alerts were not very accessible and occurred once a situation had worsened, which left many students who had to walk or drive to campus stuck unaware of the alerts until they opened their email.
“I don’t think the (UO Crime) Alerts really help keep people safe because they are rarely released on time and people rarely talk about them,” Biskis said.
