By Travis DeNeal 25

The SIUC Undergraduate Student Government approved a resolution at its Wednesday meeting condemning a federal bill designed to improve the accuracy of college crime reports.

Terry Huffman, Student Judicial Affairs coordinator who spoke to USG during its Comments and Questions session, voiced his opposition to the bill.

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Huffman said he believes sexual assault incidents may not be reported at all if the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act is passed because victims might not want to risk humiliation by testifying at an open meeting.

This could have a chilling effect on sexual assault incidents, he said.

The Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act of 1997 is a bipartisan bill sponsored by Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., and Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. The five parts of the bill seek to make colleges more accountable in reporting campus crime incidents in part by opening campus disciplinary procedures and records.

Duncan became involved in sponsoring the bill after a student was murdered in 1988 at a fraternity house at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said Scott Fischer, Duncan’s senior legislative assistant.

The fraternity house was in a high-crime area, but criminal incidents involving the house were shielded by the university as being education records, which let the university report a low-crime incident rate for the fraternity house’s location.

The family of the student (Thomas Baer) contacted Congressman Duncan, who felt it was a worthwhile cause, Fischer said.

The bill would expand the duty of reporting student complaints to include deans and other administrators, athletic department officials, housing officials, counselors or any other campus official to whom a possible crime incident is reported.

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The bill further states the following:Each college receiving federal funding will be required to maintain a public crime log detailing the nature, date, time and general location, of each crime incident. The inclusion of names and addresses of people cited or charged would be required.

Campus disciplinary proceedings that involve criminal allegations would be required to be open.

The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, or Buckley amendment, will be tightened so that incidents of misconduct cannot be closed records protected under the name educational records.

Non-compliance will result in a minimum fine of 1 percent of a college’s federal funding.

The bill, which is in a House of Representatives subcommittee, will go into effect between Jan. 1 and Sept. 1, 1998, if it is passed. It is designed to prevent universities from not reporting criminal acts by shielding such acts under the protective label of an education record.

Huffman also said that because a criminal allegation against a student, whether the student was formally charged or not, would remain open on a student’s record, potential employers might not hire a student.

Huffman said that while student judicial records are not open to the public, SIUC reports proven incidents of criminal misconduct.

Recording statistics is a very good idea, Huffman said. We report arrests for alcohol, drugs and weapons.

After debate, USG passed the resolution, which criticizes the bill for its blatant disregard for students’ (both the accused and the victims) personal privacy.

Connie Howard, USG’s Internal Affairs chairwoman and author of the resolution, said she thinks USG may be the first representative group of a student body to oppose ACCRA.

The resolution has not been signed yet by the USG executive officers, but Howard said she hopes it will not be vetoed.

I feel like this is one of the single most important things I have done as a (student) senator, she said.

Chet Lunsford, a student senator and outspoken critic of USG’s bill, said the organization should have researched the implications of the ACCRA proposal further before condemning the entire bill.

It was rushed through the Senate, Lunsford said. I’m disturbed anytime I find out about pending legislation through the newspaper.

Lunsford said a more moderate stance on the bill would be wiser.

I think we could afford better legislation, he said. Instead of taking an absolute position on the (ACCRA) bill, we could send some legislation to the House committee telling it what we like and don’t like.

In the roll call vote, 25 senators voted to pass the resolution. Dan Sherman, a Thompson Point senator, voted against the resolution, and Lunsford abstained.

Sherman said more time should have been spent researching the bill.

In July, SIU President Ted Sanders sent a letter to the Illinois Congressional Delegation stating the administration’s opposition to ACCRA (also known as HR 715).

The letter said that requiring all educators and counselors to report allegations of misconduct was inappropriate because they are not trained to handle such matters.

Howard said SIUC and USG will be able to better fight ACCRA together now that the two groups appear to be on the same side of the issue. She also said she hopes other colleges will fight ACCRA.

Now we can say, This is what we did,’ and let other universities follow suit, she said.