Transcript

Host:

Hello and welcome to today’s webinar, the Stop Campus Hazing Act: Navigating Your Institution’s Compliance. The program will begin shortly. Please feel free to use the Q&A box in the lower right corner of your screen to submit any questions you would like to ask. Now, let me introduce Alyssa Keehan, Director of Risk Management Research and Consulting.

Keehan:

Well, good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our program on the Stop Campus Hazing Act. I’m Alyssa Keehan, the Director of Risk Management Research and Consulting here at United Educators, and I just want to thank you all for joining us today. So on Dec. 23, 2024, the Stop Campus Hazing Act was signed into law. And while there are currently 44 states with their own anti-hazing laws, this foray into hazing is rather groundbreaking and significant, particularly in terms of the obligations imposed on higher education institutions. Now, most of the law’s more substantial requirements go into effect this summer, which we know is just a few months away. And one actually started on Jan. 1. So at United Educators, we knew it was important to bring this program to our insureds as soon as possible, and I’m very thankful our speakers agreed.

So let me tell you a little bit more about our featured speakers today.

Jeff Nolan is an education and employment attorney at the national law firm of Holland & Knight. Jeff has over 30 years of experience representing and advising colleges, universities, and independent schools throughout the United States regarding situations that implicate Title IX, the Clery Act, the ADA, FERPA and other laws. And so I just encourage you to check out Jeff’s full bio in the bio link, as he has a lot of great experience in education law and really knows his stuff. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Nolan:

Thanks very much, Alyssa, to you and to United Educators for hosting this important program.

Keehan:

Also with us is Miriam McKendall. Miriam is an education and employment attorney also with Holland & Knight. She co-chairs the firm’s national education team, and, similar to Jeff, she also has a wealth of experience defending and advising higher education institutions and working with leadership on compliance matters unique to higher education. So I would also encourage you to check out her full bio in our bio link on your screen. Miriam, we’re so happy that you could join us here today. Welcome to our program.

McKendall:

Thank you, Alyssa. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to take the time to address the new anti-hazing law and to be a part of this program.

Keehan:

All right, a few quick housekeeping items before we get started. The ON24 platform we’re using does allow each user to customize their views, so please feel free to adjust your view of the slide images. And if you’re having technical difficulties, you should send a message through the Q&A window, which is a nice segue to my next point. We will have a Q&A period at the end of today’s program, but if for some reason we don’t get to your question and you are with a UE-insured institution, you can use our Risk Advice service. Risk Advice is a free service to our insurers to use it. Simply submit your risk management question to the email address risk@ue.org, and our team of risk management experts will respond. Again to use that service, submit your question to risk@ue.org.

And I also want to note that the PowerPoint slides and transcript from today’s program will be made available soon, so keep your eyes open for it. And lastly, just want to encourage you all to please check out the resources tab where we’ve included a new publication from United Educators addressing the requirements of the Stop Campus Hazing Act. We have a new checklist that highlights the main requirements of the Stop Campus Hazing Act, so please check it out as it nicely complements the content that’s going to be covered in today’s program. All right, and now I will turn the program over to our speakers, Jeff and Miriam.

McKendall:

Thank you Alyssa. As Alyssa stated, President Biden signed this new Stop Campus Hazing Act law on Dec. 23, 2024. The law amends the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act and renames the Clery Act officially as the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act. Significantly, this is the most change that we’ve seen in the Clery Act in over a decade. The legislative process and the enactment of this law has been a bit in the making — probably over a decade. For those who have kept track over the years, we’ve had the REACH Act that was in process and tried to be enacted through legislature and also the End All Hazing Act. There have been many, many efforts through … significantly, families of children who have been injured or died as a result of hazing on their campuses and legislatures from across the board.

Fast-forward, Dec. 23, 2024, the law was passed with full bipartisan support and we now are in the position of going forward and taking forward with all our campuses some next steps. We turn now to an overview of the Act and … Jeff and I, as we talk today, think about what are the three aspects of the Campus Hazing Act that you all should be paying attention to, we would look at the fact that first and foremost, the Act requires clearly covered institutions to compile and disclose specifics on hazing incidents reported to campus security authorities or local police, and that should be disclosed in the institution’s Annual Security Report. When we look at that, I want you to underscore the term hazing incidents and report it because as Jeff will speak going forward, those are very important distinguishing elements.

A second component of the Stop Campus Hazing Act is that there needs to be a new reporting mechanism called the Campus Hazing Transparency Report. And that calls for publishing information relating to hazing incidents in this new report and Jeff is going to discuss the content and requirements of that report and some very, very important timing elements that everyone needs to pay attention to.

And the third component of the Stop Campus Hazing Act is the requirement of publishing information related to the institution’s anti-hazing policies and hazing prevention programs. We’re going to talk a little bit further about that as well. As we think about how we’ll proceed for today, Jeff and I thought it’d be helpful if we drill down on some of these aspects of the Act.

So we will be speaking about the hazing definition, the student organization definition, what statistics and disclosures need to be made in the Annual Security Report, the requirements for the Campus Hazing Transparency Report, the requirements for the Anti-Hazing Policy and Prevention Program requirements, and finally, some steps to consider as your institution moves forward to comply with this new law.

Our first drill down, if you will, is to look at the Act’s definition of hazing. We have reproduced on this slide how the Act defines hazing, again for the purposes of the Annual Security Report. Let’s move through this together. First we have an intentional knowing or reckless act so that as we talk forward would be the prohibited act or the bad conduct.

And that act is committed by a person and, not surprisingly, the person can be acting as an individual or in concert with other persons and that bad act is committed against another person or persons regardless of what those persons’ willingness, regardless, excuse me, of the willingness of those persons to participate. Now the Act has two subcomponents there. Very importantly. The Act is committed in the course of an initiation into and affiliation with or the maintenance of membership in a student organization and it causes or creates a risk. And that risk has got to be above a reasonable risk that would be encountered in the course of a typical participation and the risk would be to cause physical or psychological injury.

Now, we’re going to, in the next slide, get to some examples of that conduct. But before we get there, we wanted to draw your attention to the highlighted term there, an affiliation with. Many of you are probably familiar with your state’s anti-hazing laws and definitions that refer to an initiation into or the maintenance of a membership in an organization. Some states do have terms along the lines of an affiliation with, however, not many and with this new term comes not surprisingly some questions. So it is not a surprise to anyone listening I’m quite sure that with any new legislation there are often ambiguities, uncertainties, and a little confusion about some aspects of the law, some terms of the law, and how aspects will be construed or interpreted.

We think that an affiliation with language might be one of those areas that is due for some clarification, meaning it might be causing some confusion now. So we might think about when we see an affiliation language, it might be construed to cover persons who are not members of the student organization but who are otherwise affiliated with it and who engage in the prohibited hazing or subject to the prohibited hazing. Perhaps another example of an interpretation, and this is what we’ll have to see down the line, will be that an affiliation language perhaps might be construed more broadly to encompass activities in which members of the student organizations participate even if those activities are not part of an initiation or a continuation for continued membership.

So we simply don’t know if it will be both of those interpretations, one of them. And what we do hope is that we will see some guidance from the Department of Education on this law and that this issue will be addressed. We don’t know when that guidance will be issued. I think it might result in some timing issues and it really causes institutions to think carefully about that and how that will be construed going forward and how they interpret that with their obligations with the rest of the Act. Continuing now with the hazing definition, we had in the prior slide the types of activities that could cause if they cause the risk of harm or injury that they may constitute hazing and the Act itself has quite a listing of those types of examples.

Of course, they’re not exhaustive and you’ll see them all there. Some of them are very familiar, if not, because they’re part of any statutory requirements to list those from current state statutes. They nonetheless appear often in many institutions, training programs, and policies to give examples to students of what is or could be prohibited. One thing that’s important when you look at this slide and you look at the prior slide with the definition of hazing within the Act and when you think about hazing as you work on your policies, your investigation procedures and your training is that facts matter, context matters, that all of these elements to determine what may or may not fit the definition of hazing are very fact-dependent and context-dependent.

And a little drafting point of view, as most of you probably know, is when you do provide information in your policies and your training, that when you give these examples, you do encompass it to state that depending upon the facts, depending on the circumstances, depending on the context, because those aspects cannot be ignored and that is what really needs to be looked at to determine if there is hazing. The next slide brings us to the definition of a student organization. So we talked about the drill-downs. One of the things we drilled down just moments ago is the definition of hazing and also the Act defines student organization. Look at this with me, you will see that this is broad. So a student organization is an organization at an institution of higher education and it gives some examples.

Again, some examples, not exhaustive in which two or more of the members are students enrolled at an institution of higher education and whether or not the organization is established or recognized by the institution. Now let’s focus a little bit at a shorter definition and some measures an easier definition, but it’s loaded. It has the fact that the organization would be a student organization whether or not the school recognizes it. And that I think becomes more important these days to the extent some student organizations prefer to exist, but not within the recognition either voluntarily or not voluntarily within the school or a number of organizations that perhaps are under the radar altogether and the school doesn’t necessarily establish, they’re not established or recognized by the school.

When you take that broad aspect of the definition and you then look at the aspect of two or more of the members, we really are looking at quite a broad definition here. And another aspect of this new law that is calling for some clarification through guidance — hopefully from the Department of Ed — and also requires thought from you all as you sit down to go forward with your work on this compliance.

Nolan:

Thank you Miriam. We’re going to transition now to requirements for disclosures in ASRs. The Act expands current ASR reporting requirements and now requires each covered institution to include in its ASR statistics of hazing incidents, incidents that were reported to campus security authorities or local police agencies and that are reported to have occurred in or on non-campus buildings or property and on certain public property, all as defined by the Clery Act. So what we typically think of as our Clery geography.

Keehan:

[inaudible 00:16:20] it’ll cut you off.

Nolan:

Like other Clery Act statistics, reported hazing incidents in or on Clery geography must be disclosed for the most recent calendar year and during the two preceding calendar years for which data are available. The Act provides that data gathering necessary to comply with this requirement must begin not later than Jan. 1 of the first year after the date of enactment of this Act. There’s good reason to believe that the timing of the signing of this law just before the new year was intentional to move the compliance requirements forward. So the fact that the law was enacted Dec. 23, 2024, means that as of Jan. 1, 2025, institutions were obliged to begin collecting data on reported hazing.

And we’re going to talk later about the implications that has for training our CSAs as soon as possible about the definition of hazing and their obligations so that they can appropriately report information to your Clery compliance officer for inclusion in statistics because again, that requirement is already in place and has been since Jan. 1. The first time that your reported hazing statistics will be included in an Annual Security Report is Oct. 1, 2026. The law’s phrasing about timing is not necessarily clear on this point, but we’ve clarified with the department informally that that is definitely the right way to be reading this law and it is an interpretation supported by the text. So campuses should plan to in fact disclose any reported hazing that fits within the definition during 2025 for the first time in their Oct. 1, 2026, ASR.

Now the Act also calls for a completely new form of reporting. Outside the scope of your Annual Security Report, a new reporting requirement called the Campus Hazing Transparency Report. Under the CHTR requirements, each covered institution must develop and publish a CHTR when necessary — and we’ll talk about when that is — and later update it on the institution’s website again when necessary. We’ll have more detail on that in a moment. Now there are differences between what must be reported in the CHTR and what must be reported in the ASR. The CHTR must summarize findings concerning any student organizations that are established or recognized by the institution and that are found to be in violation of the institution’s standards of conduct relating to hazing.

So again, this is established or recognized by the institution and the institution has through its processes, found them to be in violation of the institution’s standards. Not necessarily the hazing definition in the CHTR Act, although as we’ll talk about later, an institution may decide to reconcile the two definitions to include both the federal definition and its own or have its own reflect the federal definition plus any state law definitions. But that is something the institution can decide as far as what it is finding institutions to be in violation of. But this is what is important. You’ve found an established or recognized organization to be in violation of the institution’s standards of conduct relating to hazing.

By contrast, statistics reporting for ASR purposes must include reports of hazing by student organizations as that term is defined under the Act, not institutional policy, and therefore because of the organization definition that Miriam covered, that’s going to include those reports about hazing conduct by student organizations that are and/or not established or recognized by the institution.

Because this is potentially confusing, now I’m going to cover the same content from the other direction. So again, differences between the CHTR and the ASR. The ASR requires the disclosure of statistics of hazing reported to the institution, and the CHTR only needs to disclose a summary of incidents in which a student organization or established or recognized by the institution was found to have committed a hazing violation.

We also have differences between what is reported in the CHTR and the ASR regarding hazing when it comes to geography. The geographic scope of violations that must be summarized in the CHTR is broader than the geographic scope of the statistics reporting section of the Act and that statistics reported in the ASR should be limited to reported hazing that occurs in or on an institution’s Clery geography. So for ASR purposes, we continue to use our Clery geography understandings that we’ve been using traditionally. The Act, however, makes a specific statement that the definition of campus that generally applies to the Clery Act and informs how statistics are compiled for ASR purposes does not apply for CHTR reporting purposes.

Therefore, if a student organization established or recognized by the institution is found to have committed a hazing violation, a summary of that finding must be included in the CHTR regardless of where the misconduct occurred. Regarding timing requirement, under the Act, covered institutions must, beginning on July 1, 2025, collect information prospectively with respect to hazing incidents concerning student organizations that are established or recognized by the institution and that are found to be in violation of the institution’s standards of conduct relating to hazing. Then not later than 12 months after the date of the enactment of the Act, so that would be Dec. 23, 2025, make the CHTR publicly available on the institution’s public website subject to a qualification I’ll describe in a moment.

And also thereafter, not less frequently than two times each year, update the CHTR to include for the period beginning on the date on which the CHTR was last published and ending on the date on which the update is submitted. Each incident involving a student organization for which a finding of responsibility is issued relating to a CHTR-defined hazing violation. Now those timing requirements are qualified by specific statements in the Act that provide that an institution is not required to develop a CHTR until such institution has a finding of a hazing violation. So if starting July 1, 2025, let’s say an institution does not have a finding of a hazing violation by a student organization that it has established or recognized, there’s nothing to publish in a CHTR.

So it is not literally required under the law to have that CHTR in place. There’s nothing to report. Similarly, with updating, an update does not need to be issued for any period in which the institution does not have a finding of a hazing violation. So if, for example, an institution had a finding of a hazing violation in September of 2025 that is published in a CHTR but within the ensuing six-month periods, there isn’t one for another 18 months. There’s no need to publish an update in the meantime. That being said, as we’ll talk about in steps to consider, institutions may wish to build a shell in which they would publish any findings and the summaries of them that are required by the law and it would be built and ready to go and it would have the other information in it that we’re going to talk about momentarily.

So that may be a practice that institutions want to adopt, even if they don’t immediately have to populate that shell with a statistic or a summary I should say, because it does not yet exist. Where there is a finding against the student organization by an institution, there are requirements of what the summary must include. So it must include the name of the organization, a general description of the violation that resulted in a finding of responsibility, including whether the violation involved the abuse or illegal use of alcohol or drugs, what the institution’s findings were, and any sanctions placed on the student organization by the institution to the extent they apply. There’s no definition of findings in terms of how much detail has to be provided.

So I think it would be appropriate for institutions to state in general summary terms what their findings were, but there are no specific requirements or parameters around what that means. In the previous slide, we really talked about transparency when it comes to what the organization was found to have done that constituted hazing. On this slide, really reflecting the transparency requirements for the institution’s response. The part of this will be reflecting additional requirements for publishing the dates on which incident was alleged to have occurred, when the incident was first investigated, when the investigation was initiated, when the investigation ended with a finding that a hazing violation occurred, thereby giving transparency to how long it took the institution to investigate the incident.

And then also when did the institution provide notice to the student organization that the incident resulted in a hazing violation? Again, how quickly did the institution move to give notice after the finding was made? Those transparency requirements, in addition to the requirement that there be publication of a conduct and any sanctions, I believe is designed to make institutions be very transparent about how they are responding to hazing incidents because a reader of this report will be able to see this is what was found to have happened. This is how long it took the institution to make a determination based on a report, and this is the sanction that the institution decided was appropriate for this conduct.

So the law doesn’t literally require institutions to take certain actions based on certain conduct, but it does require institutions to be upfront about the actions that it did take based on what the summaries reflect. So the law does provide that the summary may contain additional information beyond what’s literally required that the institution determines is necessary and/or that’s required by state hazing incident disclosure laws, but it’s not exclusive in that sense. If the institution decides it wants to provide additional information, it may do so. Another reason to create a shell so that if the institution feels like additional information about state law or institutional policy is necessary to be part of that shell so that someone looking at this information on the website is able to understand it better.

Having that in place before it’s needed may be helpful. There is a specific provision in the Act that says to the extent that summaries are being published, they cannot include any personally identifiable information, including information that would reveal personally identifiable information about any individual student in accordance with FERPA. The Act also provides specifically that the CHTR may include a description of the purposes and the differences between statistics on reports of hazing in or on Clery geography that are published with other Clery statistics in the ASR and the summaries of hazing violations by student organizations established or recognized by the institution that are included in the CHTR. We discussed that previously at some length.

These differences are nuanced, and we would not want our communities to be confused because the statistics do not match each other. You may have many more reports of hazing than you have findings, for example. And we have differences in the student organizations that are included based on whether it’s an ASR statistics reporting requirement or a student organization recognized or established by the institution CHTR summary requirement. So having those matters addressed in the CHTR can hopefully help address any possible confusion that would otherwise be present. Understandably, given these overlapping but inconsistent definitions. The Act contains very specific publication requirements for the CHTR.

Once you need to do it or if you do a shell in advance of having an actual summary to report, it’s got to be published in a prominent location on the website that is not further defined, but I would suggest taking that seriously and discussing your website arrangement and where this fits into that arrangement and it must include certain statements and we see this throughout the Clery Act that we have to include statements. They are here as well. Please take these seriously. We must include a statement notifying the public of the availability of hazing statistics published in the ASR, including a link to the ASR. Also, information about the institution’s policies relating to hazing and applicable local, state, and tribal laws on hazing.

The information required in each updated summary of hazing violations and institutions must maintain the CHTR updates for a period of five calendar years from the date of publication of such update. So again, as with other Clery publication requirements where you are required to make a statement, we want to make sure that our document, the CHTR, includes the required statements — and I would take the requirements quite literally. That typically tends to be the approach taken by the Department of Education when enforcing the Clery Act, and we’ll talk later about implications for not complying with those specific requirements. I have heard arguments at times that the law doesn’t require the adoption of certain policies and instead would arguably allow an institution to say we don’t have a policy on a certain thing.

That argument is very unlikely to be successful in a program review with the Department of Education. Their position will undoubtedly be ... If you are supposed to be making a statement about a policy, you got to have a policy to make a statement about that is much more likely to be their response. There are a couple places in Clery that that is not the case. This is not one of those places. I would encourage institutions to be working on creating the policies that are necessary to meet the requirements for what you need to be describing in your CHTR. As Alyssa noted at the outset, the law requires action to be taken on these following obligation requirements by June 23, 2025.

Institutions that are covered need to publish a statement regarding the institution’s current policies relating to hazing as defined by the institution, and that could be the new Clery Act definition plus anything required by state law that may be different or anything else the institution wants to include or it could be something different, but that might cause more confusion than it’s worth. I think institutions should probably talk with counsel about the pros and cons of various approaches in that regard. Also, the statement about policies must include statement about current policies on how to report incidents of hazing and then also, and we’ve seen this with the VAWA amendments to the Clery Act, statements regarding the institution’s current policies around the process used to investigate hazing incidents.

So again, we see that the Clery Act in the requirement that we have statements that we use that describe how we investigate, for example, sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking. We need to be publishing statements about our current policies and how we investigate hazing incidents as well. If we don’t have policies on that or procedures that govern how hazing incidents will be investigated, a fair implication from this requirement is that we should be adopting them between now and June 23. We also need to provide information on applicable local, state, and tribal laws on hazing. You’ll note this is a bit broader than the analogous requirement from the VAWA amendments to Clery where those had to be used in training but didn’t necessarily need to be included in the ASR itself.

Here these requirements need to be in this statement that’s published in order to comply with the Anti-Hazing Policy and Prevention Programs requirements. The requirements for Anti-Hazing Policy and Prevention Program statements, which also include a statement of policy regarding prevention and awareness programs related to hazing as defined by the institution. Again, you’ll see this as being analogous to requirements in the VAWA amendments and this statement of policy must include a description of research informed, campus-wide prevention programs designed to reach students, staff, and faculty, which includes information not only about the institution’s policies, reporting and investigation mechanisms and applicable law, but also prevention strategies intended to stop hazing before it occurs.

Such as information about ethical leadership and skill building for bystander intervention and the promotion of strategies for building group cohesion without hazing. Again, I think that it is important to read this statement of policy requirement as requiring institutions to have these components built into their actual prevention and awareness programs so that when they are describing these programs in the statement of policy that’s required, there’s actually something there that meets each of these criteria or each of these criteria that corresponds to the requirement of what’s being published. So there probably is some work to be done.

Certainly assessments of what institutions are doing currently may well fit into this, but if there are gaps between what the law is requiring us to make statements about and therefore have in terms of prevention awareness programs and where we need to be to comply. We need to fill those gaps sooner rather than later and appears before June 23, 2025. So the Act does not dictate the location of these publications. A logical place would be in the institution’s ASR, which as you know obviously is published every Oct. 1. It would be helpful obviously to institutions if the Department of Education would permit covered institutions to defer the 2025 publication to Oct. 1, 2025, to coincide with the publication of institutions’ 2025 ASRs.

But that’s not what the statutory language says. It says that June 23, 2025, as the current operative date given its signing on Dec. 23, 2024. And in terms of timing, it is worth noting that publication by June 23, 2025, would ensure that any new policies and programs that have been adopted, I’ve suggested in the previous discussion, are in place before students return for the fall semester. Whereas if we don’t publish until Oct. 1, we’ve had that zone of potential issues and problems and danger even between late August when you have folks who are members of student organizations, students coming back to campus for athletics teams, for various activities that are happening in the late summer into early September.

If the timing is not somehow deferred by the Department of Education, and we have our publication of policies completed by June 23, we’ll be in a position to have those out to the community, be training our folks on them when they come to campus in late August, etc. So it’s going to be work, but it also could have really significant and helpful benefits as well.

McKendall:

Thank you, Jeff. A lot to consider, perhaps a lot to do. So what Jeff and I wanted to do to help a little bit is to offer some thoughts about steps to consider and the first slide there on steps to consider reflects and to some degree repeats, but does so because it is important. Things that Jeff has noted previously about compliance and getting, excuse me, moving forward now to prepare for compliance with the gathering and preparation for disclosure of the ASR statistics. And if you look at that slide there, we’ve got to work with that as to training our campus security authorities on the obligations to report information about hazing. That brings us back to what are hazing incidents and how that works for the reporting and to establish effective mechanisms in order to collect a report and then ultimately compile that data for disclosure.

Also now, during the first quarter of 2025, Jeff mentioned this, and I’ll say it again, create a shell for the new transparency report so that that shell can be populated with information about hazing violations in accordance with all of the steps that Jeff discussed previously. And that can be done and at the ready for the July 1, 2025, date that Jeff mentioned. Additional steps to consider. In some measure are obvious and in some measure, easier said than done. But as you listen to the requirements of this new law and understand the purpose of the new law, what really needs to be done is taking a step back. Institutions need to update, revise, and probably to some degree a bit of enhancing of the institution’s anti-hazing policies, enforcement mechanisms.

Training, as we know is a requirement of the Act to meet the requirements that Jeff laid out. That all needs to be done and it needs to be done in a very comprehensive way, a campus-wide way. This is not something that can be delegated to one person or one department. It really requires a campus-wide approach if the compliance under the Act is going to be achieved and if the purpose and intent of the Act is to be achieved. When we are looking at what the next steps are and we think about the institution’s policies and awareness and prevention programs that’s required under the Act, don’t forget that schools need to look elsewhere to see where information about hazing might appear. Look at student handbooks, look at other institutional hazing-related documents.

Make sure that what is there is consistent with and addresses the Act’s requirements and also make sure what is there appears in a coordinated and consistent fashion. We often see sometimes that certain departments might describe hazing or hazing programs or hazing activities in a certain way for members of that group. And the thought process is first and foremost to be aware of what that is and then to look at that to see if it is consistent with the overall program and that we have coordinated efforts as to what information training and awareness programs are there and how those can be disseminated campus-wide and not just within one department. In the slide in front of you, what we have really is a bit of a drill-down and emphasis on what I said earlier about the fact that compliance with the Act is a campus-wide endeavor.

When we think about compliance, we think about the institution’s anti-hazing policy and importantly the anti-hazing efforts to prevent hazing, the education, the awareness, the reporting requirements. All of those really do require campus-wide coordination and training among the departments that are responsible for student organizations, student conduct and discipline, health and wellness, campus safety, and we should have left some blanks there because on your campus you’ll have additional departments that will come to mind that those are departments in particular are responsible for the conduct of students that is subject to the hazing law. In particular, looking at student organizations. This needs to be looked at with the broader lens now of the broader definition of student organization.

So when we think about getting departments around the table, if you will, to discuss anti-hazing policies and hazing prevention efforts, sometimes we think about what might be more obvious groups of student organizations, Greek life, athletics, band, other types of organizations that are front and center on your campus. But remember, that’s only the top. We have to look at the student organizations with the new definition that we discussed earlier in the day, and therefore get those persons or those departments who are responsible for those student organizations. So they are part of our campus-wide efforts. Similarly, those departments who are responsible for dealing with student conduct and discipline, they too should be around the table to really make sure this campus-wide effort is successful.

The health and safety and health and wellness department front and center, particularly on the hazing prevention efforts, the education, the awareness, some of the aspects of the slide that Jeff looked up previously that talked about bystander dimension programming, talking about alternatives to hazing activities. And I think as Jeff mentioned, we can see that we probably already have some of those programming components in place. When we think about how bystander training might be done previously or other activities might be done previously as it relates to working with students to reduce alcohol intake or in the context of our Title IX programming.

So another reason to get all these folks around the table is there is work that already has been done that can be enhanced and broadened to encompass the requirements under the anti-hazing laws, and, of course, campus safety predominantly on the agenda here and departments who are responsible for aspects of the anti-hazing laws. So look at this, think about this anti-hazing law, think about the purpose, think about the intent, and then think about the departments that need to come together on your campus to make sure that we’re not only complying with the letter of the law, but we are achieving the intent and the purpose. Also, the last bullet point there is a reminder we have state laws.

This, of course, is the first federal law addressing anti-hazing, but we have approximately 44 states that have had for various months of time, and in various terms, anti-hazing laws. So your institution must be aware of and comply with the state laws. Now to the extent that when you look at your state law, if you think there is something that is inconsistent or in conflict with this new federal act, look to your legal counsel. Look to see how first and foremost can there be any sort of harmony of the two. Can they work in concert so that you can achieve equal compliance with both? At this point, we would guess that the Department of Ed has not anticipated or addressed that there could be any significant inconsistencies or tension between the state law and the federal law.

We don’t know. Perhaps there’ll be guidance to address that or not. But first and foremost, the message likely would be review it to try to harmonize it. So those are some steps to consider. Undoubtedly, there is much that is packed into this law. Stepping back, we hope we’ve helped at least look at some of the initial aspects of the to-do list and given some ideas for the campus-wide efforts going forward and to continually think about the purpose and intent of the Act and what it’s trying to achieve and to try to work with your campus to maintain compliance and to achieve that same sort of purpose and intent to eliminate any sort of hazing activities on your campus.

Keehan:

Well, all right, Jeff and Miriam, you’ve both covered a lot of ground and now it’s time for some Q&A. So our first question asks, “What about third-party programs that occur on campus but are not run by the college? Would we potentially need to report their hazing incidents in the Annual Security Report or the Campus Hazing Transparency Report?” Jeff, any thoughts on this one?

Nolan:

Sure, thanks Alyssa. For ASR purposes, an institution would only have to include statistics of reported hazing that occurred reportedly on Clery geography. If the program is a student organization as defined by the Act, that is an organization at the institution such as the club society, etc., as defined as we’ve discussed in which two or more of the members of the organization are students enrolled at the institution, therefore reported hazing in, for example, a third-party sports camp or a math camp or some other program run for high school students or other individuals who are not enrolled at the institution should not be included in hazing statistics for ASR purposes.

Regarding the Campus Hazing Transparency Report, that needs to only include information about findings of hazing violations by student organizations established or recognized by the institution. So that would be unlikely to include third-party programs.

Keehan:

All right, so our next question wants to know what indicates whether a hazing prevention program is research-informed. Miriam, any thoughts here?

McKendall:

Yes, thank you, Alyssa. The question, I think, taps into something we said earlier on in the program, which is to remind everyone this is a new law. There are a number of aspects, terms that will call for clarification in terms of their interpretation, how they’re construed and how they’re applied. And I think this is one of them. So just to take a step back, as Jeff had discussed, the Act requires that there be a prevention and awareness program related to hazing, and that has to include, specifically stated from the Act, a description of research-informed campus-wide prevention programs. However, the Act does not define what research-informed campus-wide prevention programs encompasses or what really would be sufficient as to the term research-informed.

So knowing that’s where we start from reviewing the statute, knowing that it is new, there are areas that are going to evolve in terms of interpretation application, what we think at this point, particularly given the timing requirements. That institutions should look at it at face value, look at hazing through various reputable research to address what is needing to be done and use that reputable research in a way that can then be applied to the institution’s programming and to update that and keep it moving in a very, very progressive way. And perhaps in the future we’ll see more from the Department of Ed.

Keehan:

All right, moving on to our next question. They want to know if you can comment on the interaction between the Stop Campus Hazing Act and the myriad of state anti-hazing laws. Any thoughts here, Miriam, to offer?

McKendall:

Let me touch on that. And I do think we addressed it a bit during the program, but the reality is that we have institutions, if you’re in one of about 44 states, you have state laws that need to be addressed. And we have not for the purpose of this program done any sort of drill down of looking at each of those state’s laws and comparing them to what is required under the new act. However, every institution would be well-advised to take a look at the state law, make sure that the institution understands what the state law requires, and look at that to determine if there are any points of conflict with the federal law.

And to the extent there are any points of conflict, work with legal counsel to take a look at those with first an eye toward really the goal to try to harmonize the two and not see any tensions cause or concern for compliance with one law or the other. And right now we don’t know if the Department of Ed is going to give guidance on that particular point of view, but we would be willing to bet that from the stance of the federal law that they would like first and foremost, again to see statutes on the state side and the federal side covering the same topic to harmonize as opposed to be in conflict.

Keehan:

Well, our next one you both kind of touched on earlier, but I’ll still pose it because I do think it’s important. “When will the federal government start enforcing the new data reporting requirements?”

Nolan:

So Alyssa, as we discussed, institutions must record statistics of reported hazing for ASR purposes as things were reported as of Jan. 1, 2025. So again, that goes back to the need right now, ASAP, to be training your campus security authorities on this new definition of hazing and their requirements to report any hazing reports to your Clery compliance function so that that information can be included as of Jan. 1, 2025. Regarding the Campus Hazing Transparency Report, the obligation to publish that as to hazing violations that are found as of, excuse me, July 1, 2025.

And institutions must collect and then publish information prospectively from that date with respect to hazing violations concerning student organizations established or recognized by the institution that are found to be in violation of the institution’s standards of conduct related to hazing. And then if they do have something to report, if there was a finding on or after July 1, 2025, make that available for the first time as of Dec. 23, 2025.

Keehan:

All right, so we have time for one last question. Our last question asks, “What can happen in terms of enforcement if a college doesn’t include a statistic, make required information available, publish a policy statement, or adopt a program as required by this new law?”

Nolan:

Thanks, Alyssa. Obviously this is a pretty monumental question. Each of the requirements that we’ve talked about is enforceable by the Department of Education through enforcement action. Currently, there is no private right of action to enforce the Clery Act, and that’s stated in the law itself near the very end of the law’s text. But the department has authority to enforce each one of those requirements, policy statement requirements, adopt a program requirements, get the statistics right requirements, etc. The department currently has the ability to levy up to a fine of $69,733 per violation. That increases every year by statute. That’s the current limit.

In the past the department has varied in how much of that maximum finding authority they’ve used for different types of violations. Some you’re more likely to see 100%. Crimes against individuals, for example. Whereas other things, certain types of statistical issues around referrals for disciplinary matters, for drug and alcohol, et cetera. Some of those things were levied fines at a lower rate. What we’ve seen, however, in the last 18 months to two years is a different approach it appears from the department, where they are levying more of the percent they are able to do in the course of program reviews. So deciding that it’s going to be closer to a hundred percent per violation, per missed statistic, per missing policy statement, etc., or 80% or 75%, that kind of thing.

It has had the effect of increasing dramatically the overall level of fine activity that we have seen. So that’s something that [inaudible 00:59:19] very thoughtful about and just further emphasizes how seriously institutions need to take the requirements that we’ve talked about through this program. In addition to that, institutions also need to recognize that aside from the Stop Campus Hazing Act, there can still be civil liability for underlying conduct related to hazing. State law varies considerably in how state courts will treat potential institution liability for hazing incidents, but that’s something obviously to keep very close eye on in terms of liability.

But then also, of course, institutions are very concerned about preventing hazing and addressing it if it occurs. And those are things that institutions will hopefully be able to use the requirements of these laws to say to their constituents, we are going to comply with this law and we are also going to work harder to prevent and address hazing to make the campus safer.

Keehan:

All right. Well, that is all the time we have for today. If we didn’t get to your question and you are with a UE-insured institution, you can use our free Risk Advice service by emailing your question to risk@ue.org and one of our risk management experts will get back to you. Jeff and Miriam, thank you so much. This has been great. We just so appreciate you sharing your expertise with us and your thoughts on the Stop Campus Hazing Act. And again, I just want to also highlight that we do have a new United Educators Resource on the Stop Campus Hazing Act. It’s a checklist that covers the Act’s requirements.

So if you havent, please check it out. It’’s session will be posted to our website soon. So be on the lookout. And I just want to thank you all for joining us today for our program on the Stop Campus Hazing Act. And of course, again, a special thank you to our speakers, and Miriam. All right, this concludes our program, everyone.