After the violent killing of her daughter 40 years ago, Connie Clery devoted her life to a decades-long campaign reshaping how colleges handle crime and safety.
Clery died June 23 at age 95, but her safety movement lives on.
In 1986, Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered in her dormitory at Lehigh University. Following a yearslong campaign, Congress passed the Clery Act in 1990, requiring higher education institutions that receive federal funding to publish crime statistics in pursuit of greater transparency about campus safety. The law has since been amended to include sexual assault reporting, hazing and other safety priorities.
“They essentially willed the world to change in memory of Jeanne,” said S. Daniel Carter, a Clery Act consultant and founder of Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses, a consulting firm dedicated to college safety.
Connie Clery formed the Clery Center in 1987. After the Clery Act was adopted, Clery ensured the organization remained active, pushing the Department of Education to develop mechanisms to enforce legislation, filing complaints and training institutions on compliance.
“She was just the Energizer Bunny,” Carter said, referencing Clery’s tireless efforts at faxing, making phone calls and writing letters to Congress to ensure passage of a 1992 bill requiring colleges to establish formal rights for sexual assault survivors. “She was the persistent voice, never letting anybody forget.”
Clery’s work transformed the campus safety landscape, Carter said, moving it from a practice of security officers to a topic of national consciousness.
Bob Alig, executive director of the Clery Center, called Connie Clery’s death an “inflection point” but not a stopping point.
“I’m absolutely certain it would be Connie’s wish that we not only continue this work, but we think even more boldly, more broadly about how to keep campuses safe,” Alig said. “Connie would not want a moment of silence in her honor but she’d much prefer a decade of advocacy.”
Alig noted that even in her sickness, Clery remained in touch, checking in to ensure she hadn’t fallen behind on thank-you notes to donors to the Clery Center.
The organization is now focused on implementing the Stop Campus Hazing Act, a 2024 amendment to the Clery Act. The law requires colleges to publicly define hazing and disclose prevention efforts.
“It takes a lot of work to get institutions not just to comply, but to breathe life into it,” Carter said. “Connie didn’t just rest when they got the law passed, but spent the rest of her life working to make sure that it was working to make campuses safer.”
The reach of Clery’s legacy extends to those she touched personally.
Desiree Michael, a Lehigh alumna, knew the Clerys for decades, and asked Connie to be godmother to her daughter. Michael designed a plush character, AngelCakes, featuring a tennis pendant to honor the doubles matches Connie and Jeanne Clery once shared. Proceeds from a Kickstarter for the character are intended for the Clery Center.
“These women have lost things, and they’ve made their loss into love and light,” Michael said, comparing Clery to civil rights activist Coretta Scott King and former first lady Barbara Bush. “They chose to be resilient and strong and have tenacity.”
For Carter, who has spent much of his career carrying the Clery legacy forward, the impact is difficult to quantify but impossible to deny.
“It saved lives we’ll never know,” Carter said. “It’s hard to prove something that never happened because you did something about it, but that persistence of vision and persistence has made the world a profoundly better place.”
Benjamin White is a freelance writer.