"The Liberty Way" and the Clery Report
When Protecting the Brand Becomes Problematic
Last week, the Washington Post had a story summarizing a preliminary draft report claiming that Liberty University had failed to fully comply with Clery Act in its reporting of criminal acts on or near campus. The story makes clear that there will be a back and forth between Liberty and the Department of Education to clarify any misunderstandings or miscategorizations. It’s not clear how the Post got a copy.
The school’s response earlier this year, the statement said, detailed “significant errors, misstatements, and unsupported conclusions in the Department’s preliminary findings.” Liberty did not share that response with The Post. It said its goal was to “ensure full candor and cooperation with all of the Department’s requests.” It said the school has “made significant advancements” in safety since October 2022.
Liberty University, until recently, held the title of America’s largest Christian University boasting nearly 95,000 students in the spring of 2023.1 Half of those are undergraduates and half are postgrads. Of the undergrads, 17% (8,100) are residential students.
The Clery Act became law in 1990 and requires any higher education institution receiving Title IV (federal financial aid) funds to submit a report summarizing crimes on or near campus over the prior three years, to keep detailed records, and to inform the campus community of suspected threats. A campus safety specialist, S. Daniel Carter, told the Post, “This is the single most blistering Clery report I have ever read. Ever.” The preliminary report outlined the following:
The Program Review Report, as the initial summary is known, suggests numerous failures at Liberty, including a fundamental lack of administrative ability to keep the campus safe. It found the school did not adequately take complaints of crimes, produce incident reports, warn the campus of emergencies and threats to safety, advise crime victims of their rights or handle the data needed for crime statistics.
There is a telling section in the story’s second paragraph:
The initial report on the school’s Clery Act compliance — which the university can respond to and dispute before the department makes a final determination — paints a picture of a university that discouraged people from reporting crimes, underreported the claims it received and, meanwhile, marketed its Virginia campus as one of the safest in the country. (emphasis mine)
Like many Christian Universities, Liberty University has a student lifestyle agreement they call The Liberty Way.2 There are standard prohibitions against alcohol, premarital sex, drug use, sexual harassment, dating violence, bullying, and the like. There are also the standard campus reminders against plagiarism and academic dishonesty.
Liberty has a formal “Self-reporting and amnesty” program. Through this, a student who violated the Liberty Way goes to a campus professional and admits their infraction. The result is often some form of mandated counseling to remediate the bad behavior. Season Three of the podcast Gangster Capitalism documented why this practice can be problematic.
Not only does the amnesty program disincentivize reporting, it often results in the self-reporting student being asked to share all details of the event. If one is drinking at a party and assaulted, the questions turn to who else was present.3 Not only does this practice stress friendships but it destroys the reputation of all participants for years going forward.
The impact of the Liberty Way is to create an impression that this campus is a safe place in contrast with those hedonistic State schools.4 If the information presented in the Clery report tells a different story, this becomes hard to maintain.
The draft report summarized by the Post identified issues with data reporting. Not only were some campus police records incomplete, but records were apparently destroyed.
The preliminary report contends the university failed to adequately maintain records required for oversight and selectively destroyed or removed some records. Although the Education Department told Liberty in February 2022, when it notified the school of the review, to preserve information that could be relevant, according to the report, “senior officials in HR sought the assistance of IT staff to wipe certain computer hard drives on April 26, 2022, the very week that the review team first visited the campus.”
This is not even considering the mysterious allegation of a rape by a “former Liberty President” that was covered up. For all of his various troubles, Jerry Falwell, Jr. was quick to note that it wasn’t him.
I had the good fortune last week to have coffee with Karen Swallow Prior. We’ve been social media friends of years and occasional Zoom partners, but this was our first face-to-face meeting. We talked about her two decade history at Liberty and her more recent experience at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Naturally, we talked about the Falwell story and I summarized themes from my ongoing book project.
My summary was that this is what happens when The Brand becomes paramount. It’s more important than the students, faculty, or alumni. If that Brand is to be maintained over all else, then individual students and faculty suffer. When the Brand begins to tarnish around the edges and campus leaders start cutting corners and rationalizing to prevent any further damage. This process of protecting a tarnished Brand will fail over the long run.
When the Brand comes up against something like a mandatory Clery Report, the Brand will win in nearly all cases.5 This is true of other schools as well: Michigan State, the University of Michigan, The Ohio State Wrestling Team, and a host of others. This is a bad practice throughout higher education.
Is should be absolutely unconscionable for an institution that calls itself Christian and promotes living in Christian Community.
Grand Canyon University now claims to be larger and has their own disputes with the Department of Education.
For residential students — I’m sure they’d argue that the Liberty Way applies to the other 87,000 students but enforcement is difficult. This is a problem at other schools as well. A number of years ago, an online masters student had his admission revoked at a Christian University when the admissions office learned he was in a same-sex marriage. He sued but lost.
I’ve seen this far too often in my years of Christian Higher Education. Disciplinary officers would use a single student to round up all others involved in the spring break party.
One of my favorite stories occurred in the mid-1980s after I conducted a survey of student behaviors across the schools of a denomination. In response to a finding that 16% of single students had engaged in intercourse in the prior year, a denominational leader wrote an article bragging that 80% of our students were virgins compared to what he estimated to be a third of secular students.
This is true of other schools as well — Michigan State, University of Michigan, Ohio State Wrestling Team, and many others.