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.<\/p>\n
Clery died June 23 at age 95, but her safety movement lives on.<\/p>\n
In 1986, Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered in her dormitory at Lehigh University<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey essentially willed the world to change in memory of Jeanne,\u201d said S. Daniel Carter, a Clery Act consultant and founder of Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses, a consulting firm dedicated to college safety.<\/p>\n Connie Clery formed the Clery Center in 1987<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was just the Energizer Bunny,\u201d Carter said, referencing Clery\u2019s 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. \u201cShe was the persistent voice, never letting anybody forget.\u201d<\/p>\n Clery\u2019s work transformed the campus safety landscape, Carter said, moving it from a practice of security officers to a topic of national consciousness.<\/p>\n Bob Alig, executive director of the Clery Center, called Connie Clery\u2019s death an \u201cinflection point\u201d but not a stopping point.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m absolutely certain it would be Connie\u2019s wish that we not only continue this work, but we think even more boldly, more broadly about how to keep campuses safe,\u201d Alig said. \u201cConnie would not want a moment of silence in her honor but she\u2019d much prefer a decade of advocacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Alig noted that even in her sickness, Clery remained in touch, checking in to ensure she hadn\u2019t fallen behind on thank-you notes to donors to the Clery Center.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes a lot of work to get institutions not just to comply, but to breathe life into it,\u201d Carter said. \u201cConnie didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The reach of Clery\u2019s legacy extends to those she touched personally.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, featuring a tennis pendant to honor the doubles matches Connie and Jeanne Clery once shared. Proceeds from a Kickstarter for the character<\/a> are intended for the Clery Center.<\/p>\n \u201cThese women have lost things, and they\u2019ve made their loss into love and light,\u201d Michael said, comparing Clery to civil rights activist Coretta Scott King and former first lady Barbara Bush. \u201cThey chose to be resilient and strong and have tenacity.\u201d<\/p>\n For Carter, who has spent much of his career carrying the Clery legacy forward, the impact is difficult to quantify but impossible to deny.<\/p>\n \u201cIt saved lives we\u2019ll never know,\u201d Carter said. \u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Benjamin White is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the violent killing of her daughter 40 years ago, Connie Clery devoted her life to a decades-long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,202,227,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-237392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-education","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}