Jeff Duncan: “2 days ago, USA Today, in its lead editorial, strongly endorsed the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. This bill…”

“2 days ago, USA Today, in its lead editorial, strongly endorsed the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. This bill, H.R. 715, is one that I introduced, which now has 65 cosponsors, divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats. As USA Today said, "As long as campus courts operate in secret, students committing crimes get a privacy right denied to the rest of adults." That is what this bill is all about. It is about opening up the records of crimes being committed at campuses. A college or university that does not have a crime problem should have no objections to this bill. But parents and students should be allowed to know if certain colleges are lax about law enforcement. Many colleges prefer to discipline student criminals in secret campus courts. They use a warped interpretation of Federal privacy laws to treat these crimes as private academic records that may not be released to the public. No one has any business knowing about a student's grades or financial aid records, but it is wrong, however, when the definition of privacy is used to protect rapists and murderers. USA Today summed it up best by concluding "It is a sad state of affairs when an act of Congress is necessary for the Education Department to protect students' safety." I encourage my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 715, a bipartisan bill that will change the definition of privacy to exclude campus criminal activity.”