America's Campus Security Act more kind

A truck driver who sexually harassed a young woman in a Punjab neighborhood had also managed to bribe local police cops so they may not register a case against him based on her complaint and also beat her up with batons in full public view "to teach her a lesson" for complaining against him. Mahatma had once said that the freedom of India could really be cherished when women in country will walk on its roads unafraid even at midnight. He would have rephrased his words if he had been alive to witness the police brutality in Punjab: "The freedom of India could be cherished only when the women in the country would not fear to approach the police for assistance, even at midnight!" Though the Ohio State shooting or the Virginia Tech massacre or the Yale lab murder continue to be the darkest patches in the memory of students as well as parents, we can emphatically say that Punjab like episodes will rarely occur in a country like America. Women trust the police and security staff even at midnight in the United States. If a girl wants to go to a place in her university campus in the midnight, she can as well call the "public safety" office in the university campus and request for an escort. If she wants to walk, the public safety office will send an escort-by-foot to go along with her. If she wishes to go in a vehicle, they will send an escort-by-vehicle. And, this is not a piece of fiction! Also, if a student was stranded in the city or outside the campus) due to unexpected reasons, he or she may call the PSO in the university campus, take a cab and go, and the PSO will pay for the taxi and charge it for his/her account later.

The issue of campus safety is a vital concern to all the international students who seek to pursue higher education in the US. It's interesting as well as reassuring to those who are worried about campus safety in America that the United States has not only developed but also been implementing very strappingly an exclusive Act aimed at making educational institutions safer and the administrators more accountable for maintaining campus safety. The American Congress enacted the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990 which mandated the higher educational institutions to disclose the campus crime statistics and security information to the Department of Education on a regular basis. Generally referred to as the Clery Act, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act was named in memory of a student who was killed in her dormitory in 1986. As per the Act, postsecondary educational institutions should regularly give information to the US Department of Education about all kinds of crimes that occurred in the campus in a given period of time. Based on these statistics, students and parents will decide whether a particular university campus is safe for them. Owing to this regulation, every postsecondary educational institution will strive to attract students and their parents by way of reducing their annual on-campus crime rates. The US Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education has put on public domain "The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting, Washington, D.C., 2011," at the following web link (more than 200 pages). It's basically intended to guide the university administrators in implementing the Clery Act but worth downloading/reading by all students who opt to join US universities. This is a wonderful resource to comprehend various aspects of campus safety in the United States. Female students can draw more benefit out of reading this handbook as it details various scenarios that might affect them on the campus, though most unlikely when this exclusive Act is in force at every campus.