The Clery Act: What's All the Hype About?

Have you ever felt intimidated by the breadth and scope of your Campus Safety Report duties? Colette admits that she's felt bullied by so-called Clery Report trainers who use scare tactics to build their consulting hours. Enter Cecilia Dockery and Paul Hinkle from the Clery Center! They are kindhearted, mission-driven trainers who help make crime reporting as easy as possible. And they keep a healthy sense of humor along the way, including the accompaniment of Clery hype songs and playlists. Tune in for their interview and then turn up the volume for the attached playlists curated by Paul to keep you motivated as you crunch your data. 

Links Mentioned in Episode:
Virtual Summit registration site: www.clerycenter.org/ncsam-2026/
Westat email: campussafetyhelp@westat.com

*Playlists:

ASR Webinar playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4dzIN281PhWN6PEsDC29gy?si=9lSvrrobT02K4-o6BbVglA

CATS Playlist 1 (The OG): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2gGBWp3OJ0igeGIUEcem9h?si=e-Of39QYRtawpOVI3V0qug

CATS Playlist 2: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3K59c4jPCTgk5I9XDug9h0?si=MCyH2gKATfW8FqvX21gG7A

CATS Playlist 3:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UsTO2kLQpS2bsEcRpX942?si=r0x4x3_nSoGElX8iBPYDMA

CATS Playlist (AI Version):
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32mtksSYgNbTQVsDHRDKaB?si=qoZF6R9mQnKDwVyCl-bt0Q

*None of the tracks are explicit versions in these playlists, in case you're keeping your CSR work rated PG. 

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Theme music "Fuzzball Parade" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hello, welcome to Ms. Behavior, the podcast for college student conduct professionals. My name is Colette.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

And I'm Kurt.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And we're your hosts. And we are now post-book club, Kurt.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yes, it was uh it I had a great time. How did you uh how did you like it? Was it everything that you hoped it would be?

SPEAKER_02 0:31

It was. It was really exciting to talk about research in the field and just have people from different types of institutions weighing in on um how they think the the new learning is gonna affect their practices. Did you have any big takeaways?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you on uh meeting your goals. So that was great. You know, my takeaways were really around the student-centered aspect of it, I which I know seems pretty obvious, but I think about always my upbringing in student conduct and how transactional I was at times, and how that does not work with things like retention and a sense of belonging. So I think for me it was interesting to see where we are now in the evolution of student conduct and how it fits into retention and student satisfaction and uh just contributing to that holistic experience for students. What about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

I'm gonna echo what Greg Meyer from Moravian College said about feeling validated as a relational or like counseling-oriented student conduct person. I think we sometimes are written off as like we're the outliers or we're the softies in the field, but actually to see research that shows that this is how you actually have a bigger impact on students is to know them as individuals and try to customize your approach to whoever's sitting in the chair. But also like, oh, all the work we need to do before they even show up. Oh, the the the stress and anxiety they experience while they're waiting to meet with somebody, no matter how nice we are, like can we match that and how we're reaching out to them right from the start.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, and there's probably not a whole lot of exceptional pre-work you can do to let people know what the role of the student conduct officer is. But I think you know, we've had some offline discussions about the importance of student conduct professionals just be being involved in the life of campus before they ever have to meet with the student. And I love that idea, just being engaged as an as a student development person on a college campus and going to orientation and you know, having lunch in the dining hall with students, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

We did talk, which is going to be a nice uh segue into introducing our two special guests today. We talked about the shift in higher education in our field toward compliance and how for a lot of people they're so focused on compliance they forget about the underlying reasons why we exist. So let's introduce. We have from the Cleary Center today Paul Hinkle and Cecilia Dockery. Welcome, you two. Hi, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

It's excellent to be here. I'm really excited to be able to hang out with both of you again. It's been a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

It has. We met in February at the national um ASCA student conduct conference in Virginia. And Cecilia, I think it was you already starting to challenge some of my understanding of what the Cleary Center does, what the Cleary Act is. And we were very excited to get you on to talk about misconceptions and the positive work that you do. Do you want to start, Kurt, with our traditional icebreaker?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yes. We typically ask our guests if you could tell us about a time when maybe you got into some trouble at your college when you were an undergrad. So do either of you or both of you have uh any experience being on the other side of the conduct chair? Paul, I see your wheels turning.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

I'm I'm trying to think because the problem is that I was the I was the person who was well known for being the terrible buster of other folks, right? Like I was I had nicknames about enforcing rules. Um, I was a resident assistant and quite unpopular for my approach at the time.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Can you tell us more about that?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

First the nickname, and then I'm sure that your listeners would want to hear many, uh, many of the nicknames that I received. Um uh as they are they are quite rude. Um uh but yeah, it was just, you know, I took a lot of pride in ownership in my building. I had been a uh first-year student in that building and then became a resident assistant there and really cared about that particular community. And so I looked at it as kind of protecting it, right? And so um was very quick and on board to just jump into kind of the policy end of things and and and jumping into that, into that more uh policy enforcement role in order to ensure that people were following the rules. You know, probably left a little bit of the the uh interpersonal stuff behind in some of those. But that's something that you learn and pick up along the way. So maybe some of the nicknames may have been deserved at times, but we live and learn.

SPEAKER_03 5:45

Yeah, I think for me, I think I got documented for like violating quiet hours one time as a freshman. And I think that might have been it. But I never actually like went through a conduct process. I think we just got like a warning email of like don't violate quiet hours again. Um, but that was really about it. Was this like a post-midnight karaoke situation or it was just so my freshman year, my everyone in my residence hall, we were really close. So we were always in someone's room just hanging out, laughing, having a good time, watching a movie, watching TV, playing a game or something. Um, we were never getting into any sort of trouble other than it was usually just a lot of us. We lived in a building called Campbell Hall. So we were the Campbell crew. So we just, yeah, we were just always having a good time. So sometimes we got a little too loud past quiet hours.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

You're making me think of an idea. I would love to give RAs the future Paul Hinkles of the world. But then of course there's a little card that maybe they knock on the door and just it says, thank you for helping to build community, but maybe could you keep it down? Because right now we have so many students in isolation. They're surrounded by people in their halls and they don't know how to make friends anymore. I love that you were doing that. It was great. Cecilia, tell us how did you go from college? Like what was your um origin story to getting into working with the Clear Act?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Sure. I I think I mentioned this a little bit at ASCA when we were talking, but um, probably similar to a lot of juni affairs professionals, I got really involved as an undergrad. I um joined several student organizations. I was part of the campus activities board. I joined a sorority during my sophomore year. I became an RA for my sophomore through senior year. I pretty much, if there was a student organization, I joined it. Um usually if someone asked me like, hey, do you want to come to this student organization meeting? I said, sure. What's the organization? I just went. I it didn't matter what organization it was, I would just go to it. So I just got really involved. If there was a campus event, I I would volunteer at it, I would go go to it. Um, so I was just really involved, sometimes probably to the detriment of my grades at times. So that wasn't always the best. Um, but yeah, I just had a lot of uh a lot of fun getting involved. And yeah, so then I decided to continue and get my master's degree in college student personnel administration. Paul and I actually went to the same university for grad school, not at the same time, but we were there at the same time at one point. So that's a fun little connection we have there.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

And did the Cleary Center come looking for you? Or did you have an interest in pursuing something outside the traditional campus?

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Yeah, I kind of just found it. I actually had recently transitioned into a new role at a university. So I hadn't been in my role for very long when I found the position at Cleary Center. So it was kind of a unique um position that I was in where I was only at my university for like seven months when I left, uh, which is not something I not something I like to do, right? I like to stay somewhere for for a lot longer than that. But it was just a really good opportunity. I really loved working in higher ed. I loved the job that I was in at that time, but the opportunity at Cleary Center was just a really, really great one. And I just didn't want to pass up on that opportunity. I really wanted the opportunity to do something larger than just working on a single campus. And working at Cleary Center allows me to help a lot of campuses across the country and help professionals to really understand uh what the Cleary Act is and help them to make their campuses safer. And so being able to have that impact across the country was just something that I was really interested in. And so the timing of it just was what it was.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I'll just give a short thank you to her institution for her former institution for letting her, you know, leave quickly in order to come join us.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

I I had a very, a very gracious supervisor who was fantastic and supportive. She tried very hard to keep me, but she was fantastic and we are we're still very good friends. So she she doesn't hate me for it.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Paul, what was your pathway into Cleary?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

I found myself kind of in between uh positions. Um so I had left my previous institution with the idea that I was gonna be going to pursue a doctorate degree, and then just due to different aspects of personal life, found it that I wasn't going to be able to go, uh needed to have some sort of position that was gonna allow me to be making income if I was gonna make that journey. And so ended up with seeing the position from Cleary Center. Um, at where I was, I was actually working Title IX, student conduct, student government, and the our Cleary team was myself and then our assistant director, safety and security. And so it was like the two of us were really kind of the ones who put our heads together when it came to making sure that everything that was cleary related came out okay. And so it was just kind of a really good fit with my background of having a lot of experience in coming in that education space and designing a lot of trainings. And so it was just a really good opportunity that just managed to find the right time to make that all work out.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Can you both tell us a little bit about your role at the Cleary Center or your roles at the Cleary Center?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I mean, uh yeah, I so what I do is I'm uh the one who does most of our designing of our kind of foundational curriculum. It's our Cleary Act training seminar, um, or we call it CATS. That is just kind of if you need to know everything about the Cleary Act and what it requires, what it entails, this is the training for you. And so I work on that, kind of how I build out all of the different learning modules in that system. And then also I work with our free annual virtual summit that we hold each September and pulling that together. And so that's kind of my little specialty area within uh the assistant directors of programs. And Cecilia has her own specialty areas, and then we share an overlap in providing technical assistance. Um, so if anybody has questions, they can reach out to us. That is a membership benefit. Do you have to belong to us either as an individual member or as an institutional member? But we then we also do annual security reports. Um, we can come and do customized trainings and the and services on campus or virtually, and those are things that we share. Cecilia, do you want to talk about your specialty area as well?

SPEAKER_03 12:42

I focus on our webinar series. Um, so we each year have a webinar series where we offer usually around like three or four webinars that are free and open to the public. Um, we also will usually do some member exclusive webinars as well. So I plan out that webinar series, um, what the theme of it will be and what all of the content will be, and um plan and create the webinars themselves. I usually facilitate those along with um sometimes I'll have one of my colleagues facilitate them uh with me as well. So I try to get creative with them because they're always on the topic of the Cleary Act. But since it's always talking about the same thing, I try to make it unique and fun so that it's not the same thing year after year. So, like this year's webinar series is called Charting Your Course. And so it has kind of taken on like a navigational theme. Paul and I last week just did one about um the annual security report, and it was kind of like a road trip theme. And so we kind of walked them through a project plan of working on your annual security report as though it was mile by mile through a road trip. Every good road trip needs a playlist. So it was our very first webinar that came with a playlist, too. I try to keep our webinars fun and unique and creative. That's the main focus that I have. Um, I also facilitate kind of all of our programs as well, alongside Paul. I also have a lot of background in obviously student conduct, as well as a lot of that was focused on student organization misconduct and hazing investigations. And so with the uh new legislation from the Stock Campus Hazing Act that amended the Cleary Act, I've created a new workshop that we implemented this year on investigating hazing. And so I created the curriculum for that as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

I don't think I'm an outlier. The training and support that I've received over the years did not come with a playlist. It was not designed to be fun and easy. It was presented by people who made money from trying to scare us into making sure everything was perfect and pointing out every little error and you know, threatening us about all the fines we'd have to pay. And you two feel like you are the good guys in this work of trying to make it easy for folks to comply. So first I wonder if you could explain a little about what the report is, and then do do you have ideas for us as a field for stopping the focus on the wordsmithing and really focusing on safety and doing the things that are gonna keep folks well on their campuses? Cecilia, maybe I'll toss that to you first and then and then Paul.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Sure. Yeah, I think um we definitely take a different approach than what we've heard from a lot of of others because your your take on things is not different from what we've heard from a lot of other folks. So you're not alone in feeling that way. And hopefully people walk away from our trainings feeling different because we we do take a different approach and we don't want to scare people. We know that it's hard. There's a lot of requirements under the Cleary Act, and so we we know that that's hard, and we know that it's often tasked to one person who also has like 20 different other responsibilities that they have to do. So it's just a lot. Our goal is to work together with them to really break it down and make it easy to digest and to understand. Really, where we come at it from is that the goal of the Cleary Act is really to make campuses safer and to create transparency so that students, employees, their families understand what is happening on campus and what security policies are in place, what prevention programs are happening, so that they are informed about everything, so that they can make decisions for their own safety and for the safety of others. And ultimately, that is what is at the heart of the law is campus safety, right? It's not about compliance, it's it's not about the fines. Yes, those those exist and those can happen. But if you're focused on doing the right thing and providing the transparency and creating the safety, then you don't have to worry about the rest of that because you're doing the right thing and creating that transparency so that your campus can make the right decisions. And so that's really the approach we take. We do try to make it fun. Our our training can be three days, four days long, depending on what you do. So that's a long time to listen to Paul and I talk. And so we have activities because we also think that the best way to understand it is to put it into practice. So we give folks case studies, we give them activities where they get to take the information and actually apply it to real life scenarios that they might run into on their campus so that they can actually understand it in a way that they're gonna encounter it in their day-to-day work. And so that I think helps to make it a bit easier to digest and understand.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

I think from the, you know, if we're talking then about how to take that and back to your campus, right? And how do we stop that culture that we're trying to build from being one out of fear? I think it goes back to kind of, you know, uh what you the both of you were talking about right at the top, right? Is this idea of, you know, this process is about belonging, right? If we want to tie it into culture, we want to tie this into retention. If the clearing act is about transparency, somebody shows up on your campus and all of a sudden it is nothing like they thought it was going to be. How did we provide this information about what is our safety culture? So when I'm looking at this annual security report that this institution's putting out each year, what this is, is it's a document that's telling me what my culture is when it comes to campus safety. So when we're taking a look at those numbers, you know, in the stats and the charts, if that's like, oh man, disclosing this feels scary. Well, it's not about whether or not the numbers are big or small, it's about whether they're accurate. Because if we're we're doing a disservice to our students, we're doing a disservice to our employees, if they show up expecting one thing and finding out it's another thing. We're doing a disservice if we talk about, you know, the way that we are showing up in support of um, you know, survivors of interpersonal violence in one way. And then when they come forward with a report, they experience a completely different process than what our policies and procedures say they should. Right. And so if we're practitioners on our campuses, these are opportunities for us to make sure that policies are aligned with practices and that we're taking those things and actually building it into the way that we work. It's about building that culture. And so, like the saying that I always say is safety is built in culture. The work that we do every day to support students has to be the way that we keep students safe. Every single part of student services, the way that we talk about accountability, the way that we talk about retention, the way we talk about recruitment, even, the way that we go to class and learn, all of those things mean nothing if at the end of the day we don't feel safe on this campus. And so we need to be focusing and centering that conversation.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I wondered could you think of a school that maybe really exemplifies what you're talking about, where they live in that spirit of safety and culture building and not just in getting the report numbers right?

SPEAKER_03 20:21

One thing we often talk about in pretty much all of our trainings that we do is we often encourage campuses to build a Cleary compliance team, as we refer to it. And they might call it something else. Um, but as I mentioned before, right, Cleary is often given as a responsibility to one person. And that one person also often has a bunch of other job responsibilities because cleary is usually not their sole focus. And so that is why we often say that they should create a Cleary compliance team, because even though they are solely responsible for Cleary, the Cleary requirements are actually happening all across campus. Those prevention programs are happening in other departments. The CSAs are working all across campus. Those policy statements that are reflected by uh actual policies, those are held in other departments. And so really bring all those folks together, and that can be your cleary compliance team. We have uh one of our members who's also been on our um national advisory council who works at a community college. And they often are campuses that um really struggle with cleary compliance because we know that at community colleges, already everyone who works there is wearing five different hats. They they do all the jobs all the time. And so somebody who's doing cleary is doing all the jobs plus all the cleary. So they are really doing all the thing. And so at this campus, this person has just Really kind of built up her own team and built connections all across campus and is always trying to do all the best things and constantly trying to figure out how to solve the problems. We know, especially now, like community colleges are often struggling with how do we do hazing prevention programs? Because we know most community colleges are non-residential. They don't often have athletics, they don't have as many student organizations as your large four-year institutions do. And so they now have to do hazing prevention programs because of the new requirements under Cleary, but they need it to look different than how it's going to look at a four-year institution. Um, and so, you know, she's been great at, you know, asking colleagues at her institution, at other institutions, how are you doing this? And she really does have that that great team. She's making it work and is really doing doing all the things. And kind of that team aspect, that team approach is what is really working and just doing a really great job with it all.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Appreciate the shout-out to community college because I'm a community college professional and I can relate to a lot of what you said. I I do think a lot of times when people develop policies or training, they build it for for your institutions and then try to squish it into some other form to make it work for a community college instead of looking at it as it's serving different student populations. You have different facilities and different constraints that those schools have. So I appreciate the uh the attention to that.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

There, there are um, there are definitely plenty that are doing really great for sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

If a college came to you and said we're thinking about putting together a cleary team and we want to put together a dream team, do you have a list in your head of positions or offices that you would say you've got to include this? It would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

We actually have an activity called the Cleary Dream Team as one of our activities. Yeah. So I um uh we have two editions of it. We have both the Cleary, uh we have a point by system where different categories and levels of individuals are worth different points. So you get like a total of 10. Then, like, you know, are your directors and VPs are worth, you know, five points, and then folks lower down in the responsibility tier are worth fewer points. And then we also have a fantasy draft version where it's uh fantasy, you know, football, or if you if you play fantasy football, um, and then snake drafting. Um and I think the slept on positions are your uh publication and outreach teams, right? So the people who are putting out your marketing, who are putting out your publications, who are crafting messaging, because again, talking about a lot of it is built into this big document. And so it's like this is these are the people who are responsible for crafting how you talk about things as an institution. So if we're talking how you communicate culture, this is that group of people. So why would we not bring them on board? I'm also a very big fan of making sure that your prevention folks, prevention programs in all their shapes and forms are part of that team. You know, so that's including people who are familiar with your how you're doing your drug-free schools and communities act requirements for your alcohol and drug prevention programs, your interpersonal violence programs now with the Stop Campus Hazing Act, your hazing prevention programs, all of those things are impacting Cleary. And so if those folks aren't on board and into your Cleary team, they're not going to understand that their pieces are incredibly important to that conversation because invention is the first part of safety. Cecilia, who are your sleeper picks out of the dream team or just the the best hits?

SPEAKER_03 25:49

I always remind campuses to bring in a student, right? Get that student perspective into all of your cleary compliance. I also tell them like it's always good to have whoever's in charge of all of your properties, like the buying, selling, renting of properties, because that impacts your cleary geography a lot. And campuses are are buying, selling, renting properties all the time and changing that on a daily basis. And if you're in charge of cleary and you don't know that we just bought a property, you you need to get on that because that might become part of your cleary geography and you need to know your statistics. So whether that's like your director of facilities or if it's part of your operations or whoever it might be, get them on your team. They don't have to show up to every meeting, but you need a connection there.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Love the addition of a communications team because I think they are the unsung heroes of college campuses. You can have the best information in the world that needs to get out there. If you do not know how to package it, it's not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

I don't know if you have thoughts on this or if you've been on campuses. So the trend right now for university webmasters is to buy into this only shiny on the outside web stuff, that anything that is not sparkling with just positivity is supposed to be hidden behind a password protected area. And I feel like for work like this to be really successful, transparency is really important. And if students and parents and lawyers and key people cannot find realities about safety, it can send false messages. And I don't know. I just it's it's troubling to me. And uh does that impact your work at all?

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Yeah, it it definitely does. And um, we actually were just talking about this last week in our webinar because we had a really great question come in during the QA portion of that, where um we were talking about um promoting your ASR, your annual security report, and how it's important that you do more than just send the one email every year that says, Hey, we published our our ASR. Um, if you want people to read it, you really need to do more to make sure they know that it's there. And so we got a great question about what do you do when your campus leadership doesn't really want you to promote it because you maybe have a high number of some of your statistics. And so one thing we talked about was that your statistics are not a measure of how safe or unsafe your campus is. That the whole purpose is just about creating transparency so that your students, your employees, their families have all the information they need to make informed decisions about their safety and the safety of others. And so if you are trying to hide that, you're actually just at odds with the whole spirit of this law. And that's that's really not a good thing, right? And really, when you think about it, if you have more statistics than zero, your campus is actually probably on the safer side than a campus that has all zeros. Because what that says to me is that people are reporting crimes when they're happening. They they know how to report, they trust that they can make a report to your campus, and so they're doing that. Whereas sure, there are some campuses that, by the nature of their location, the size, and things like that, there are just lower numbers of crimes. But there's probably not a campus where there's just absolutely no crime whatsoever. And if reports aren't happening, that's not good. We want folks to know how to make reports and to feel comfortable making those reports. So the fact that there are statistics alone doesn't mean your campus is unsafe. And that's where it's really important to know how to communicate that. And so if you can't do that, bring in those communications folks who know how to send that message because you need to educate your campus that these statistics don't mean our campus is unsafe. It means this is what's happening, people are reporting it, and we want you to know about it so that you can take these precautions. And then it also gives your campus safety staff, your public safety, your police, security, whatever it might be, some information about where we need to increase our prevention efforts, where we might need to do some extra patrols, where we need some more lighting and things like that, so that they can take those precautionary things. So really it's all just increasing your campus safety efforts.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Can we uh talk about prevention a little bit? Here was one of my pet peeves with our reporting is sometimes the stuff we knew that was working the best for prevention might not have the the word alcohol in it. Once we implemented midnight bingo night, all of a sudden our alcohol underage drinking went down. But our cleary reporter would send that back like that's not a prevention program, that's a bingo night. And um, I'd love to hear the actual Cleary people give me a sound bite that would let me go back and say, nope, actually, that's a really legit program. Or is it? You might correct me too.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

I mean, I can I'll go on the record for this one and say any program that's intentionally designed in order to take place at a time in which high-risk behaviors occur so that way they are no longer occurring is by definition a prevention program, even if it does not have alcohol in the title. Um, and so if that is part of your designed programming in order to make that happen, 100% include it in, right? Like your prevention programming requirements under the Cleary Act and what you're required to disclose is a little bit different than uh just a full list of here's every single program that we did last year. Uh those things aren't the same. So it's talking about here are the strategies that we implement, here's what we're trying to do, here are these policy standards that we guarantee are being provided and being done. But ultimately, it's about effectiveness, like for that particular requirement. It's because the reason that alcohol is part part of the Cleary Act is because of the large connection between the consumption of alcohol and the occurrence of several Cleary crimes. The occurrence of uh interpersonal violence, the occurrence of um, you know, any crime of violence against a person or property increases with the use of alcohol. The stats were known back when the Cleary Act was created, back in 1990. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

If I'm getting a takeaway from that, it is to show the intentionality of it as the strategy for reporting it to your reporting person.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

I think so, yeah. And you know, it's it's one of those things where the the when I see a list of programs in an ASR, and Cecilia, feel free to chime in here as what you see from that list when you read those lists. We're not looking at, you know, if we're assessing it and from our point of view. Um what makes this a disclosure of what's currently happening on your campus is these are illustrations of the kinds of approaches that we continue to take on an annual basis. Intentional programming during high-risk behavior times. Here's an illustration of that. Midnight Bingo. I'm I would be fully on board with saying that is something that would qualify. I've qualified that in lists that I've put together. So that's why I like I'll take this one because I've put that thing on my own ASR before. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

And what makes a good uh prevention programming effort is a well-rounded effort. If you have kind of those late-night alternative programs, and you also have those programs that educate on the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol, and you have um programs that educate on responsible use of those substances, that makes a well-rounded approach. If you're only doing one of those, then you're missing out on a lot of other opportunities to educate your community and to provide options for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

So I remember, Kurt, I don't know if would you have been in the field back in 1990 when uh the Cleary Law was passed?

SPEAKER_01 34:21

I was in kindergarten. What are you talking about? No. No, that was actually the year before I I started in college.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

So oh, so that would have been really relevant. And I I remember at the time it was just publishing your crime numbers, and now it has grown. Can you give us a little kind of summary of what now it entails? And Cecilia, I'll pitch that to you and then Paul and curious what your predictions are for where Cleary is going in the future.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

A lot of folks first think of the Cleary Act as the crime statistics, but it is, of course, a lot more than that. The annual security report not only contains those statistics, it has policy statements about a number of areas, and those are a summary, hopefully, a summary of um campus and institutional policies about things like emergency notifications and timely warnings, um, about a lot of safety procedures, those prevention programs we were just talking about. If you have housing, there's very particular policies that have to be in place. There's requirements for disciplinary procedures for addressing dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking, which overlaps and intersects a little bit with Title IX, but it can be a little bit different than Title IX at times. And so cleary professionals have to be a little bit knowledgeable about both of those laws. It um it really does cover a lot of areas, and then now, most recently, it includes hazing requirements. So there's hazing prevention programs that are part of it. There's hazing statistics that will first appear in this year's annual security report, reporting on 2025 reports of hazing, and then there's the campus hazing transparency report that is disclosing findings of violation of student organizations who have been found responsible for hazing. So, really, there's a lot that the Cleary Act covers. But truly, the annual security report does kind of summarize a lot of it for someone who doesn't do the day-to-day work of the Cleary Act and wants to kind of get a good snapshot of what it is on their campus, that would be their kind of go-to resource.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

So I think, you know, if we're looking at where we're moving going forward, we do know that the negotiated rulemaking process has now been added to the administrative plan uh to begin in November for the Department of Education. And so I think what we're taking a look at in the short term is we're taking a look at getting some actual Department of Education regulation about here is how we are implementing the Stop Campus Hazing Act and in more interpretation on that statute language. Um, and so we'll just get a little bit, hopefully, more information that will help guide practitioners. And so this is where I know that I've been encouraging folks who've routinely brought up questions about exactly how do I do X, Y, or Z process when it comes to hazing, is feel free to send that question to the uh the the company the company is called Weststat or WeStat, depending on how you say it. They have a say they have a helpline, and I'm saying, hey, go ahead and send it in uh if you are somebody who works in this. So that way they know, like they're gonna send you back. We don't have regulations yet, so we don't know. But it just kind of helps tick that counter up of this is something that we need to talk about. Um, obviously you can reach out to us as well, but uh, that's just kind of one thing to put on the radar. I think the other thing that I take a look at is there is this focus surrounding Title VI right now, uh, and how we're implementing broader discrimination. And so I think there's the potential that we could see part of, you know, the broader discrimination uh outside of just what's covered under Title IX and what's covered under hate crime reporting. I could see there being pushes to kind of start bringing that into the Cleary Act reporting. And then I do know that there are some bills that are proposed usually every Congress that are about reporting on accidents and trauma response centers each that come up each Congress that are something that there is a little bit of a push to get through. All of those things are things that we watch and try to keep an eye out for on things that are likely to move forward, likely to pass, and try to keep people up to date and informed. But those are a little bit of some different areas that I think that we'll actually maybe see some movement on or some way to address here in the next, you know, couple of years or so without trying to get out uh, you know, a magic eight ball and just shake it.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

Is there anything on your wish list for you things you wish you could update yourselves?

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Um I think that it would be really nice to get some uh information from on uh some of the strange geographies that have started to occur since the original writing of the law. Um, you know, so like geography hasn't really been updated too terribly much. A lot of the information on how to interpret it was in the 2016 handbook, which was rescinded as guidance. And so I think it'd be nice to get some more information in writing, in regulation on how to do things like uh, you know, a lot of these P3 partnerships where we're you know coordinating with private companies. A lot of urban schools are struggling a lot with, okay, we own a building because we may want to retain its use maybe in the future, uh, but we've leased it out and now there's weird things happening um, you know, as far as like, well, it technically kind of meets this definition, but in this weird way. Um, you know, and so there's some of those kind of interplays that I think that I'd like to get just a little bit more concrete information on, um, just as my wish list, because I just see so many schools just constantly having to come to us. Uh, and I want practitioners to feel like they can answer those on their own.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Always nuance for me when I see legislation related to our work, like my wishes for more w nuance. I appreciate that, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Cecilia, what's your wish list? I'm curious. I want to know if you have one.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

I mean, I think probably what we're gonna get out of the negotiated rulemaking is just kind of some more uh clarity on what they expect for the hazing requirements, because we do we do get a lot of questions about that, and we we provide our best interpretation of it. And hopefully when we get those rules, then we can say, like, yeah, we were right. We've been we've been working to create a lot of resources related to the hazing requirements to try to help guide campuses as best we can, because we do know that they have a lot of questions and kind of have had to just figure out a lot of things on their own. So I think it'll be really helpful to have some more information from the Department of Education specifically about the hazing requirements.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

You all work in some pretty serious stuff, but you both seem like you bring a spirit of fun today. Cecilia, I'm wondering how do you keep your morale up? And then Paul, we're gonna we gotta ask you about um what?

SPEAKER_03 41:53

Um I have a few different hobbies. Some of it you can see behind me. Um my office doubles as my craft room, so I do a lot of crafting. Um, so that's how I spend a lot of my free time. I also love to run. And so that's a really great way to get the stress out, is just to go for a good run. So um, between running and crafting, it's a great way to uh just keep keep things light.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Paul, tell us about your your playlist. Can we get a copy of the Cleary playlist? Yes. Um, but then your personal hype list is what we wanted to follow up on from ASCA.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yeah, of course. Yeah, we actually there are now, I think, four different playlists that we have created and made like kind of sort of a fifth one. Um because yeah, we have one, a unique playlist for each day of our in-person three-day long training. Uh, and then we have now the road trip playlist, and then we uh Cecilia and I have debated on starting a challenge to see who can like hit we have an AI-generated hype up playlist, and our thought is to have one of mine, Cecilia, to make one and then have an AI generated one, and then have participants each day vote on which one was the best at these trainings, and then you know, have a little friendly wager. Um so I think, you know, I'm always the fan of like the the music sets the tone for the room. And I try to think of like what is like, you know, I'm you know, I'm a I'm a pretty big guy. I'm 6'2, I'm a larger person. And so it's like, what are these things that just people don't really expect from me? Um and this is, you know, my walkout song when I played, you know, high school baseball was Man I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain. Uh uh, you know, the I batted ninth. That's the tradition is you give them a silly song that doesn't, you know, and so I've just kind of continued that something that brings up the energy. Uh, and this is where wannabe from The spice scrolls came from. I actually sang it with on like karaoke. The very first time I ever attended Ayaclea, uh the uh, you know, with a bunch of chiefs of law enforcement on Chiefs Night, I got up on stage and did karaoke with uh I I now he is like the director of the law enforcement museum, uh memorial in uh Josh is his name. And we got up and did Spice Girls karaoke in front of everybody, and it was fantastic. But yeah, so I think just what is the way that we can just have fun energy even to start the day? Because again, we need to just set that tone to begin with. But 100% uh I'll email you so that way you have it. Uh if you want to link it with with how you distribute the podcast, we can you can put it in the description. So that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

I'd love the competing the the competing lists too to to vote. We could do a blind vote um to see I I would like the humans to win.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

It'll be like the Pepsi Challenge.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Yeah. I mean we can I can rename the playlist, so it's not obvious which one's made by AI, and you can run a little vote. Who's better, Paul or AI?

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Yeah, I would love it.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

It's gonna be pretty obvious which one's mine because mine has wannabe on it, but I guess you could pick one of the other ones that I made.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Or add um wannabe to all three of them. We can throw people off. We've talked about doing us human versus AI for outcomes to see who could come up with the best. This will be our first dipping our toe into it.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

You'll have to share the outcomes.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Very few people watch our video version of the podcast. Paul's a wearing kind of a Hawaiian.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Yeah, some nice floral print here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

Whimsy. Paul always has the style. Oh, you've got a style, Cecilia.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

We just have different styles. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

I did want to I wanted to ask too, Paul. Did you want to plug the annual virtual summit before I forget?

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Yeah, if you'd like to join Cleary Center for our uh virtual summit, uh it's our National Campus Safety Awareness Month virtual summit will be happening on uh September 10th uh from 11 a.m. Eastern time to 4 p.m. Eastern time.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

I'll link it in the the show notes so people can just click through and find it. And I'm also gonna put the information for um Westdat or We Stat. Well, you two showed up on time, in time, and you were fantastic. Any final words uh that you would want us to remember about the kind folks at Cleary?

SPEAKER_00 46:35

For me, I would just say feel free to reach out. We're we're always here to help, but you know, and we'll we'll help in any way that we can. Um and so uh our goal is is to make sure that this is friendly and accessible. We want to make sure that it feels like something campuses can accomplish. You know, just reach out if you need something. We're we're we're happy to help.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

If uh if you think cleary is not part of your job, it probably is. So um we we have plenty of great resources on our website that are free. So if you've never been part of Cleary Center or checked out Cleary Center, visit our website because we have a lot of really great resources to help you learn more about the Cleary Act um and to help you do your job.

SPEAKER_02 47:17

We are so grateful that you're out there doing this work and helping to make it easy for folks. So Cecilia Dockery and Paul Hinkle from the Cleary Center. We really appreciate you being part of the Ms. Behavior family. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Ms. Behavior is written and produced by Colette Shaw and Kurt Doan. Theme music was written and performed by Kevin McLeod from Incompotech.com. You can contact Ms. Behavior at Ms. Behavior College at gmail.com. That's MS Behavior College at gmail.com.