Higher education’s annual federally mandated disclosure of campus crimes has been an especially grim task this year for officials at three universities dealing with the aftermath of sexual-abuse accusations against campus physicians.
The federal campus-crime-reporting law known as the Clery Act requires colleges that receive federal funding to release a compilation of crime statistics each October 1 for the preceding three calendar years. Because the disclosures reflect the date that a crime is reported rather than when it is alleged to have occurred, the universities — Michigan State, Ohio State, and the University of Southern California — saw steep surges in reports of abuse, most dating to years-ago incidents.
