The Philadelphia Inquirer, by Darran Simon

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — In the days after the Penn State sexual-abuse scandal broke, Alison Kiss’ organization fielded a flurry of calls about a federal law that requires universities and colleges to report crimes on campus.

A deputy chief of security from a Southeastern university called with a question. A vice president of student affairs from a university in the Northeast called. So did a director of judicial affairs for a Midwestern institution.

“I hope that the calls we have received is an indicator of what’s to come,” Kiss, executive director of the Wayne, Pa., nonprofit group Security on Campus Inc., said Saturday about the increase in calls. “It would be wonderful if institutions actually start to take a proactive step to adhere to the letter of the law and embrace the spirit of the law.”

Security on Campus, a national victim-advocacy and training agency, was founded by the family of Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Clery, who was beaten, raped, and murdered in 1986 in her dorm room by a student whom she did not know.

Her parents said they learned only after her death that numerous earlier crimes and security lapses had been unreported by the university.

After her death, the family learned that there was no law requiring universities to report crimes. They pushed for a federal law, which passed in 1990, that requires colleges and universities to tell the public about all crimes and publish an annual report with crime statistics and safety policies.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would investigate whether Pennsylvania State University officials failed to follow the law and notify authorities about the alleged sexual assaults of children on the Penn State campus by a former football assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.

In calling for the probe, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.) said that adults have the responsibility “to act and report when they see children who are abused or threatened. In the case of college authorities, it’s not just a moral obligation, it’s the law.

“. . . Had authorities at Penn State reported the allegations to law enforcement and properly disclosed these allegations under the law, perhaps children could have been protected from abuse.”

While she has no inside information about the Penn State case, Kiss said the failure of officials to report allegations of child sexual abuse was a symptom of preferential treatment in college athletics.

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