Subcommittee advances campus safety bill requiring student training and expanded crime reporting

The House Higher Education Subcommittee advanced House Bill H 4739 on a unanimous vote Monday, adopting an amendment and reporting the measure favorably to the full House.

The bill requires public, private and technical institutions that receive South Carolina Education Lottery-funded scholarships or grants to develop mandatory campus safety training for all new undergraduate and graduate students who physically attend classes. Training must be provided during orientation or within the first 30 days on campus and must be developed by each institution’s public safety director in coordination with the institution’s president and governing board.

“The bill establishes a comprehensive campus safety training, reporting, and transparency requirements,” Macy Webb, who summarized the amendment for the committee, told legislators. Webb also described a strike-all amendment that clarifies reporting responsibilities and adds mental-health and crisis-response topics to training.

Supporters said the amendment aligns state reporting with federal Clery Act requirements and with how law enforcement agencies report incidents to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). “By reporting the campus crime data consistent with the way other law enforcement agencies in South Carolina report their incidents to SLED, this enables our communities … to interpret and understand the campus crime data better,” Chris Wojcnik, associate vice president for law enforcement and safety and chief of police at the University of South Carolina, told the subcommittee.

Under the adopted amendment, each institution must submit its annual security report (the Clery Act report) to the Commission on Higher Education or the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education, as appropriate, and must also submit the report to SLED by Oct. 31. Institutions must post the report and an annual summary analysis on their websites and email the reports to students before the first day of classes in the following fall semester. The commission, state board and SLED must make the reports publicly available with no more than three links by Nov. 15 and provide a composite summary to the chairs of the House and Senate education committees by Dec. 1.

The summary analysis required by the amendment must include counts for criminal reports alleging homicide, sexual assault, assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle larceny and arson occurring on property owned, leased or controlled by the institution, and must indicate whether alleged victims and alleged offenders were affiliated with the institution at the time of the reported incident. The amendment specifies that nothing in the text requires disclosure of personally identifiable information or material that would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation.

Committee members praised the bipartisan process that produced the bill. Representative Hamilton Grant, who helped craft the measure, said it was designed to give parents and students confidence while respecting institutional autonomy. “I’m proud of this legislation,” Grant said during floor discussion in committee.

The subcommittee adopted the amendment by voice roll call and then reported H 4739 favorably as amended by a 7–0 vote. The bill will next be scheduled for further consideration by the House.