STATEMENT OF THE HON. BERNARD SANDERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT

STATEMENT OF THE HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

STATEMENT OF MR. DON MCPHERSON, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SPORT IN SOCIETY, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

STATEMENT OF MR. BENJAMIN CLERY, SECURITY ON CAMPUS, INC., PALM CITY, FLORIDA

STATEMENT OF MS. CRYSTAL PAULK, SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS, GREENCASTLE, INDIANA

STATEMENT OF MS. DOLORES STAFFORD, DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY POLICE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR CAROL BOHMER, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS, OHIO

STATEMENT OF MS. STELLA GOLDBERG, PARENT OF FORMER STUDENT AT CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY

STATEMENT OF DR. PETER H. ARMACOST, PRESIDENT, ECKERD COLLEGE, ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL INDEPENDENT ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES

STATEMENT OF MS. JANE STEWART, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL RELATIONS, KENTUCKY HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY, FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY

STATEMENT OF MS. DEBORAH DUNN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, YORKTOWNE BUSINESS INSTITUTE, YORK, PENNSYLVANIA

STATEMENT OF MS. NANCY WILLIE-SCHIFF, ASSOCIATE IN HIGHER EDUCATION, NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, ALBANY, NEW YORK

Appendix A – THE OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HOWARD P. "BUCK" MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Appendix B – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BERNARD SANDERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE VERMONT

Appendix C – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CONSTANCE MORELLA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Appendix D – THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. BENJAMIN CLEARY, SECURITY ON CAMPUS, INC., PALM CITY, FLORIDA

 

Appendix E – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. CRYSTAL PAULK, SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS, GREENCASTLE, INDIANA

Appendix F – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. DOLORES STAFFORD, DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY POLICE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Appendix G – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR CAROL BOHMER, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS, OHIO

Appendix H – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF DR. PETER H. ARMACOST, PRESIDENT, ECKERD COLLEGE, ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

Appendix I – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. JANE STEWART, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL RELATIONS, KENTUCKY HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY, FRANKFORD, KENTUCKY

Appendix J – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. DEBORAH DUNN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, YORKTOWNE BUSINESS INSTITUTE, YORK, PENNSYLVANIA

Appendix K – THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MS. NANCY WILLIE-SCHIFF, ASSOCIATE IN HIGHER EDUCATION, NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, ALBANY, NEW YORK

THE TESTIMONY O F THE STUDENT PRESS LAW CENTER IS CONTAINED IN THE OFFICIAL RECORD, WHICH IS ON FILE WITH THE COMMITTEE’S OFFICIAL RECORDS

THE TESTIMONY OF THE NOW LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND IS CONTAINED IN THE OFFICIAL RECORD, WHICH IS ON FILE WITH THE COMMITTEE’S OFFICIAL RECORDS

Table of Indexes 211

Thursday, July 17, 1997

House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning

Committee on Education and the Workforce

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:34 a.m., in Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives McKeon, Goodling, Roukema, Castle, Deal, Kildee, Roemer, Woolsey, Romero-Barcelo, Hinojosa, McCarthy, Kind, Payne and Ford.

Majority Staff Present: Sally Stroup, Professional Staff Member; Lynn Selmser, Professional Staff Member; George Conant, Professional Staff Member; and Pamela Davidson, Legislation Assistant.

Minority Staff Present: Marshall Grigsby, Professional Staff Member; and David Evans, Professional Staff Member.

Chairman McKeon. I apologize for the delay, but our rules state that we have to have two members from the Committee present before we can start the hearing. As soon as one other member arrives we will start. I am tempted to swear in you two as members of this committee.

We will now open our hearing. Thank you, Mr. Kind, for helping out here. Mr. Kildee is unavoidably detained in another meeting and will be with us shortly.

Welcome. I appreciate your being here and again, apologize for the delay.

Today's hearing will cover several important issues. Of particular importance to me as a father and a grandfather is the issue of campus crime.

Every day we hear about violence in communities across the United States in both rural and urban settings. However, I know we all want to believe our schools, both elementary and secondary, and institutions of higher education are safe havens where, for at least a little while, our children are safe from harm.

But the statistics are hard evidence that our colleges and universities, as well as our elementary and secondary schools, reflect what is happening in society as a whole.

During the 101st Congress, Chairman Goodling introduced and had enacted into law the Campus Crime and Security Awareness Act. This was a first step in our efforts to find out what was happening on our college and university campuses and to provide students with the knowledge required to prevent themselves from becoming the victims of campus crime.

Last Congress, Chairman Goodling and myself introduced a resolution which directed the Department of Education to give priority to the monitoring of compliance and enforcement of the provisions of the campus security act. Secretary Riley assured us at that time that the Department would make a greater effort to enforce the current law.

As we have begun our efforts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, we have heard about the need to make further modifications to the campus security provisions in order to improve their

effectiveness in providing students and faculty with the information they need to protect themselves.

I know today's witnesses will provide us with even more information on ways in which the current law can be modified, and I look forward to their testimony.

Our second panel today is going to talk to us about the issue of regulatory reform. At the field hearings we conducted across the country, students and parents were most concerned with the issue of costs. College presidents and administrators who testified were most concerned about burdensome and ineffective regulations which help drive up those costs.

Witnesses from all sectors of higher education discussed the need for regulatory reform. Many talked about the high costs associated with regulatory compliance.

One financial aid director talked about the great deal of time she spends on regulatory compliance and what little time she has to spend with students.

Another witness questioned the need for Congress to pass laws, since the law tends to get rewritten by federal agencies via regulations which don't reflect the law that Congress enacted.

In a recent letter from Secretary Riley, he indicated that the increasing complexity of the Higher Education Act has been a critical factor in the growth in the number and complexity of higher education regulations. That means Mr. Kildee and I need to develop a reauthorization bill that reverses that trend. We will do our best to decrease complexity; and, hopefully, the result will be regulatory simplification for everyone involved in higher education.

I look forward to hearing from all our witnesses today, and I thank you all for sharing your views with us on these important issues.

Mr. Kind, do you have an opening statement?

Mr. Kind. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, this is, without question, one of the more important reauthorization hearings that we are going to have before this committee in this session of Congress.

In regard to the second focus, of regulatory reform, in virtually every field hearing that has been held across the country witnesses from secondary and postsecondary schools have spoken about the effect of federal regulations, the number of regulations, their complexity, that some regulations are not issued until 5 years after the enactment of the 1992 amendments, and that other regulations appear to be in conflict with the intent of the statute.

I share that feeling that I hear amongst our colleges and universities. I look forward with keen interest to the testimony we will receive today and am particularly interested in how our witnesses will suggest we address the problem and come up with relief that is real and meaningful.

Concerning campus crime, I believe everyone owes a big debt of gratitude to our Chairman, Bill Goodling.

On a personal note, as special prosecutor in western Wisconsin, the district I now represent, that has five State universities and seven technical school campuses, I work closely with many of the higher education institutions to find a way to combat campus crime and make these areas safer for students and faculty.

There have been incredibly innovative ideas in Wisconsin institutions and particularly western Wisconsin, but more work needs to be done. Every college campus in our system should be a safe haven for learning, and we should make sure that every student has the right to pursue a college education in an atmosphere free from fear and from the threat of crime.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

We have two special guests who will be joining our first panel, Representative Connie Morella and Representative Bernard Sanders, who wish to say a few words about House Con. Res. 29 which they introduced on February 27 of this year.

Our other panel members include Don McPherson, from the Center for the Study of Sport in Society of Northeastern University in Boston; Mr. Benjamin Clery, Security on Campus, from Palm City, Florida; Ms. Crystal Paulk, Society of Professional Journalists, from Greencastle, Indiana; Ms. Dolores Stafford, Director of University Police of George Washington University here in Washington, D.C.; and Professor Carol Bohmer, Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

As we begin, you will notice in front of you a green, a yellow, and a red light. The green light means your time has begun. We have your written testimony; and if you can stay within the five minute time limit, we would appreciate it. That will leave us more time for questions.

When the yellow light comes on, one minute is left; when the red light comes on, the trapdoor is about to open; and you pass into an oblivion.

So we would appreciate it if you would follow those lights.

We will now turn the time over to Representative Sanders.

Mr. Sanders. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to congratulate this committee for the work they are doing on very important issues.

The reason that I am here today is to urge you to incorporate the resolution that Congresswoman Morella and I have introduced into the higher education amendments or a similar bill or that it be reported favorably on its own.

I am especially pleased to be joined here today by Congresswoman Morella, who, as you know, is the principal author of the Violence Against Women Act; and by Don McPherson, a former professional football and college star. Perhaps even more importantly, he is now the co-director of two outstanding programs at the Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sports in Society. The Athletes in Service to America Program and the Mentors in Violence Prevention Program. We want to congratulate Mr. McPherson for the work he is doing.

Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Morella and I are concerned about all forms of violence against women. This concern led us to write directly to the leaders of a number of professional athletic organizations such as, the NFL, NBA and the MLB, to urge them to get more involved in campaigns against domestic violence.

I think the heart and soul of what we are saying today is that, very often, we read in the newspapers about bad things that athletes are doing regarding domestic violence. Like politicians, Mr. Chairman, athletes seem to get their names in the newspapers, sometimes for good things, sometimes for bad things.

The essence of what Representative Morella and I are trying to do is turn that around and make the point that there are many, many athletes like Mr. McPherson in all ranges of sports who do not practice domestic violence Who do not believe in domestic violence. In fact, we want to use their name recognition to be able to communicate with young men all over this country to say, yes, we are athletes; we are tough on the football field; we get bruised up. But, you know, after we are off the field, we don't beat up our wives or girlfriends because that is not a macho thing to do.

We know there are many athletes out there in professional sports and in the college ranks who agree with us and are prepared to speak out against domestic violence. We think it would be silly for us not to utilize their willingness to play an active role in knocking out domestic violence.

Ms. Morella and I introduced House Con. Res. 29, in February. This legislation calls for the first-ever National Sports Summit. We will bring together people involved in athletics, government, business and academia, along with nonprofit community organizations. To determine how, working together, athletes can play a more aggressive and proactive role against domestic violence.

Mr. Chairman, I don't have to tell you, because I know this is the work that your committee is doing, that when we talk about crime in American society it is just not murder and robbery, that domestic violence should rank up there as one of the major crime problems this country faces.

I know you know that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to American women, more so than auto accidents and rapes combined, by unknown assailants. Nearly 4,000 women die a 1 year as a result of domestic violence.

If you can believe this, in my small State of Vermont, 3 or 4 years ago every woman who was killed, every single one, was killed by somebody that she knew; a husband, a lover. So a woman was more in danger in the State of Vermont at home, than walking down a dirt road. This is a national problem. It is a very serious problem, as you indicated, on our campuses. I know that is the work you are doing.

Ms. Morella and I would very much appreciate your support for our legislation. Incorporating it into your bill would allow us to utilize people doing terrific work like Mr. McPherson and many others to speak out and play the role they want to play against domestic violence.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to have my formal statement submitted for the record. I thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Without objection, we will do that.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Morella, you may begin.

Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Chairman McKeon and Members of the committee. I very much appreciate your holding this hearing today on violence. It is, in fact, a dirty secret that will not go away until we confront it head on.

Congressman Sanders and I care a great deal about sports and the positive role sports play in our society. In the lives and education of our children from grade school through college. We are very much aware of the special position that athletes, professional and amateur, hold on and off the playing field. There is no doubt that most professional and amateur athletes deserve our great admiration and enthusiastic support.

But we know on our campuses that one in six women will be raped or sexually assaulted this year. One in 12 male athletes surveyed admitted committing acts that meet the legal definition of rape, and sexual harassment. It is an everyday fact of life for many women pursuing their education. We have a serious problem, and it begs for a national solution.

That is why we drafted H. Con. Res. 29 calling for a national summit on sports and violence. This is why I am so pleased that Don McPherson, athlete and educator, is with us this morning.

I would like to add that Mr. McPherson's parents are here. They live in Damascus, Maryland, and are my constituents, as well as his sister and her family.

Mr. McPherson comes to this hearing with outstanding credentials. He was the star quarterback at Syracuse University, compiled 22 records and numerous awards, including 18 National Player of the Year Awards, and was a runner-up to Tim Brown of Notre Dame for the Heismann Trophy. He went on to play for the Philadelphia Eagles, the Houston Oilers.

Mr. McPherson also played for two Canadian teams. In his off-seasons he worked as a volunteer with young people in the communities where he played.

Mr. McPherson joined the Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sport in Society in 1995, and he is director of its Mentor and Violence Prevention Program. Don't you like it? It is like "MVP".

He also co-hosts Sports Saturday on WBZ radio in Boston, Massachusetts, and has appeared on national television to discuss such subjects as athletes and domestic violence as well as racism in professional football.

This MVP program was set up to inspire male student athletes and other student leaders to assume responsibility for and provide leadership on issues that historically have been regarded as women issues: rape, battering and sexual harassment.

MVP seeks to both educate men and women athletes about their roles and responsibilities and to help them use their special status to provide direction and role modeling to younger boys and girls.

Mr. McPherson will tell you about problems of violence and student athletes on our campuses and provide direction to the committee about possible solutions. So it is my great honor to introduce to this very important subcommittee Mr. Don McPherson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. I thought we had a new expansion team there.

See Appendix C for the Written Statement of the Honorable Constance Morella

Mr. McPherson. Sounded like a Canadian football team, actually.

First, I would like to thank Congresswoman Morella and Congressman Sanders for inviting me to be here today. It is an honor to come and represent Northeastern University and, most importantly, represent my family who are here with me today.

I am proud to be able to support Resolution 29 to address the violence that we see and in particular gender violence in sports.

To reiterate the philosophy of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, it is to address social issues using sports and athletes in particular to reach young people in a variety of different social issues that plague our young people's lives. We choose to educate athletes and then train them to work with young people.

It is a very important distinction that we do in the sports society, because we don't feel that athletes, by virtue of them playing on the field, on the court or on the ice, to be role models unless they have been properly trained.

The Mentors in Violence Program was created with the philosophy, we are careful not to call it domestic violence because it happens in many forms and not only in the home, but to foster the program to get men to address the issue and in particular to get male athletes to talk with other men about the role men play in this subject. It is an issue we address by talking about the construction of masculinity with young boys. This is central to a lot of the teaching in athletics.

We feel that it is also very important to point out this is men's responsibility. This is a men's issue. Traditionally, these issues have been considered women's issues, which has allowed men to ignore the issue, allowed men to not take part in the issue.

The other key central point of this program is to talk about bystander behavior. Far too often, when men are forced to address the gender issues, considering it a woman's issue, they feel attacked. They feel they are being attacked. We do not speak to men as perpetrators; we speak to them as bystanders, what they can do when they see or hear gender violence in any of its forms.

My experiences with this program have been very, very positive. There have been college and high school athletes working with students in the high schools throughout Massachusetts and New York and Connecticut; and I found, with young men in particular, athletes really had the space to speak about these things being considered women's issues. They had the space to talk about women's issues and to talk about how their masculinity is formed and how we address athletics.

One of the things we teach our young people who are athletes, very frankly, we talk about when coaches or teammates tease by saying, you throw like a girl. They are teaching young boys at a very, very early age that girls are less than boys. That is an attitude perpetrated throughout their lives in our culture as we see women fighting and continuing to fight for equal rights in our society.

That attitude that women are less than boys is reinforced by our culture. So it is something sports does play a role in, but our entire culture is responsible for this. It is cognizant not to vilify athletes or athletics but to talk about what we can do in raising the issue.

I would like to cite the case of Ralphero Cordero, a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, who a little over a year ago was in a domestic violence issue with his wife. The media in Boston was very tough on him, but I think they were fair. But the problem with that is it stigmatized not all athletes once but stigmatized him as more people blamed athletes and particularly in booing him at the games.

What we try to do, instead of discarding these athletes, is educate them and work with them and work with the leagues.

That is why I am proud to support Resolution 29, because I think it is something we need to do. It is time that the professional leagues and also the businesses that benefit from sport and the business of sport are aware that they do sell and contribute to the climate that some people call a rape culture in the United States.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much.

The Committee did not receive the Written Statement of Mr. Don McPherson

Chairman McKeon. Mr. Clery.

Mr. Clery. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. Thank you very much for inviting me to testify here today.

My name is Ben Clery. My younger sister, Jeanne, was murdered at Lehigh University in 1986. I am the current President of the public nonprofit organization, Security On Campus.

The reality of violent crime in our nation's colleges and universities is alarming, and administrative tactics to distort the truth is scandalous. Aggravated and simple assaults, rape and sexual assaults, burglaries, petty theft, arson and vandalism are chronic problems plaguing campuses across the nation.

Approximately 80 percent of campus crime is students on students. At the core of the campus crime problem is a scourge of illegal drugs and alcohol abuse, correlated to 90 percent of all campus crime incidents. Many college campuses in suburban and rural areas are the high crime neighborhoods of their communities, contrary to public relation spins that school administrators derive from corrupted crime statistics.

Homicides, whether murder or manslaughter, are no longer aberrations on the college scene. Last October, a Purdue freshman killed a graduate dormitory supervisor, then turned the shotgun on himself because he had been turned in for cocaine possession.

Purdue, Penn State, Ohio State, UCLA, San Diego State, the University of Miami and Rowan College have all endured campus murders since this committee addressed campus crime just 13 months ago.

Scores of freshmen die each year from acute alcohol intoxication during Greek Rush and fraternity initiation rituals which typically require excessive drinking and various acts of self-degradation.

Serious weapons violations, especially bomb making in dormitory rooms, is an escalating threat to campus safety. A recent survey by researchers at Cornell University and Southern Illinois University indicated that 11 percent of male students and 4 percent of female students carried weapons on campus during the previous 30 days. Worse, the researchers found weapon carrying males had a higher tendency to binge-drink and use illegal drugs.

On June 12, police searched a campus apartment at Wright State University and discovered dynamite, hand grenades, a grenade launcher, an M-16 rifle and other weapons.

In April, 1996, a New England senior accidentally lost three fingers when his bomb exploded in the dormitory. Police found five other bombs, an assault rifle, a handgun, as well as heroin and cocaine.

Gang rapes have become a despicable and horrifying trend within the higher education community, usually perpetrated by athletic team members and fraternity brothers. Virginia Tech's wide receiver is again facing rape charges, along with the teams fullback, not even 2 years after his assault on Kristy Brzonkala.

Three Morehouse basketball players were charged last October for raping a Spellman freshman in the dormitory. Five Grambling State football players were charged last November for raping a 17-year-old girl who wandered into their dormitory. Three Southwestern Michigan College basketball players were charged with raping an 18-year-old girl and videotaping their crime last November. Other recent gang rapes committed by students were reported at Appalachian State, Virginia State University and Clemson University.

Sexual assaults on campuses have reached epidemic proportions, according to studies which indicate 25 percent of all college coeds will be victimized during their 4 undergraduate years.

Last year, the president of a Catholic liberal arts college for women, speaking on behalf of 11 college and university associations, impressed upon the committee that the source of campus crimes comes from surrounding neighborhoods and said, we take the Campus Crime and Security Act very seriously. We do not need to spend more money on record keeping and disclosure.

Pat McGuire and her higher education colleagues couldn't be more wrong unless they are posturing to thwart any verifiable identification system for campus crime problems. They have become hypocrites whose faculty teach the virtues of an open democratic society and to question authority in the classroom, while their administrators deny the campus community a system of checks and balances to verify the incidence of crime on campus.

For the sake of law-abiding students and the entire campus community, I implore members of this committee to work for bipartisan passage of H.R. 715, the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. Insist on an open system with checks and balances for the higher education community and deny the confidentiality protections of FERPA to criminal activity.

Lastly, please remember the awful suffering of student-victims that has driven us into the chambers of our government today.

Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to briefly introduce the surviving parents of several slain victims:

My mother, Mrs. Clery, the mother of my beloved sister Jeanne, who was murdered at Lehigh University; Addie Mix, the mother of Stevie Mix, who was murdered at Houstin-Tilliston College; Genelle Riley, the mother of Robin Riley, who was murdered at Saddleback Junior College; Margaret Baer, the mother of Tommy Baer, who was murdered at the University of Tennessee; Sandra Bennett, the mother of Garrett Bennett, who was murdered at the University of Oregon; Stella Goldberg, the mother of Jeanne Goldberg, who was murdered at Carnegie-Mellon; and Beth George, whose son Tommy was murdered at Marymount University.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the subcommittee, thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Paulk.

Ms. Paulk. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about public access to crime records and campus judicial hearings.

My name is Crystal Paulk. I am a recent graduate of the University of Georgia and worked at The Red and Black student newspaper when the judicial system was both closed and later opened as a result of legal action.

I speak to you today on behalf of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), which is represented by 14,000 members nationwide, and the Campus Courts Task Force, a coalition of all the major organizations representing professional and student journalists and journalism educators.

This is not just a news media issue. I also speak on behalf of the parents who are deciding which school their child should attend; and I am the voice of students who are denied information related to rapes, assaults and robberies in their communities.

In recent years, Congress has shown a willingness to protect students when it passed the Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act of 1990. Congress later amended the Higher Education Act in 1992 to make clear that law enforcement records on college campuses are not beyond public scrutiny.

This is not enough.

The U.S. Department of Education continues to allow schools to use the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act and its Buckley Amendment to deny access to criminal information within the campus judiciary system. With passage of the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act of 1997, the public will be fully informed about the safety records of all private and public campuses across this country.

University communities are served by police forces and court systems that are not subject to public scrutiny. That is contrary to the way law enforcement and court systems operate off campus. Government officials cannot filter or suppress documents or prohibit public access to criminal judicial hearings. But on campuses across the country, secret proceedings are the rule rather than the exception as administrators hide behind the Buckley Amendment.

While crime increases nationwide, students at the University of Georgia have access to police reports and student disciplinary hearings and records that help them protect themselves.

As a journalist, I reported these student hearings to the public. Many of them were drunken driving infractions, deadly themselves, but others were more disturbing, such as the fraternity member who drank a fifth of Golden Grain and fired his rifle over the heads of students walking to a nearby residence hall or three student cashiers who stole over $4,000 from the University of Georgia bookstore.

On two separate occasions, I covered hearings involving fraternity hazing rituals of paddling. In both instances, victims required hospitalization. There were also numerous drug busts in residence halls and fraternity houses. Confiscated substances included marijuana, cocaine, heroin and LSD tabs.

Before hearings opened, students accused of violating university regulations were unable to compare previous records to see if they were being treated fairly. Publicized inconsistencies between drunken driving sanctions led to administrative overhaul of the judicial process. Open hearings also informed student victims that their assailants had been sanctioned. Public outrage following the second paddling incident led to stricter sanctions of fraternities found guilty of hazing.

But despite increased crimes in colleges and universities, large and small, rural and metropolitan, private and public, administrators continue to underreport crime and keep the public from accessing timely and accurate information. Worse yet, they hold closed hearings on incidents involving crime and defend the process as educational and necessary.

We believe the main reason is image and enrollment. Keeping the publicity at a minimum by dealing with matters internally helps recruiting. Meanwhile, parents and students become victims when they believe a campus is safe when it really isn't.

Let me conclude with an example of how quick a full disclosure can help students and the community.

On a warm spring Sunday morning in 1995, a female student was jogging alone on the sidewalk behind the University of Georgia football stadium. Music from her portable radio prevented her from hearing a man slip behind her. The woman was dragged into a wooded area, brutally raped and beaten with a rock. Left for dead, she hauled her battered body to a street, where a passing motorist mistook the woman for a hit-and-run and called an ambulance.

Several hours after the attack was reported, University of Georgia police issued a press release with specific information about the time and location of the assault. It also included a description of the woman's assailant. This immediate response most likely prevented another assault because the campus community was an informed community.

There is no logical reason for officials to deny access to police reports or disciplinary records. Protection of a school's reputation is not adequate justification. Nor is the protection of an individual worth endangering other lives within a college or university community.

On behalf of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Campus Courts Task Force and parents and students throughout the nation, I thank you for your time.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Stafford.

Ms. Stafford. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

My name is Delores Stafford. I am the Director of the University Police at the George Washington University. I have 13 years experience in security and law enforcement, and I have spent the last 5 years at the George Washington University. I have 75 sworn police officers, 12 administrators and 150 students who work for me part time. We have a budget of approximately $3.5 million.

I am also the coordinator of the University's Sexual Assault Crisis Consultation Team. I am active in IACLEA, and I am on the Government Relations Committee for that group.

I am not here to say that crime doesn't occur on college campuses, but I would like to address one issue up front. There seems to be an underlying belief by some that institutions are hiding crime or purposely underreporting crime. This is not true.

My colleagues, some of whom are in the audience, would agree that most of us in the campus security business want to work closely with the members of the Department of Education as well as the members of this committee to make sure that students and families are provided the proper information with regard to crime on campus.

The Campus Security Act of 1990 requires policies and procedures regarding security be given to students. It also requires that we report specific crime statistics and that we provide timely notice to the community.

The recent GAO report published in March of 1997 confirmed that there were some problems which led to incidents where institutions were publishing incorrect numbers and, according to the GAO report, were, in some cases, overreporting crime.

H.R. 715 would require numerous amendments to the current law. Some of the changes are reasonable. However, some of the changes would be counterproductive.

Those that are reasonable include the requirement for additional reporting of four categories of crime, including larceny, arson, simple assault and vandalism. Institutions should not have much difficulty meeting this requirement.

The proposed language requires that each institution submit the report to the Department of Education and requires the Department of Education to compile those statistics. This would be easily accomplished by institutions because we already compile and publish this information.

I don't believe that it is problematic for institutions to report incidents of drug, liquor and weapons law violations. Many institutions, such as the George Washington University, already report the number of arrests, as well as the number of incidents that are referred to the judicial services within our university.

I do believe that the language should be clarified to include incidents requiring enforcement action, rather than simply incidents of. The proposed language requiring open crime logs is not problematic. In fact, I have been publishing our crime log in the student newspaper for the last 4 years. However, the requirement for the open crime logs to be available within 24 hours is somewhat unreasonable, based on holidays and weekends. Therefore, I encourage you to look at the state laws already in existence for further guidance on how you might accomplish this task.

The changes that are potentially counterproductive include the proposed definition of the list of persons responsible for providing crime statistics on campus. This creates one concern, which is the addition of the title counselors. I would strongly recommend that counselors be removed from this definition. Students need to be able to seek professional assistance, via counselors, without fearing that the counselor will breach the student's right to confidentiality.

The rest of the proposed definition does not cause great concern.

H.R. 715 would delete a subsection in the current law which states that nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to confer a private right to action upon any person to enforce provisions of this paragraph. The deletion of this language would create open season for litigation against institutions for even the smallest minor technical error.

For example, if a university police officer erroneously classifies a burglary as a larceny, this would create a private right of action against that institution. If this paragraph were to be deleted, it would be harmful to every institution of higher education.

The aspects of this proposal that would require open campus disciplinary hearings and would exempt those disciplinary records from FERPA has a potentially chilling effect upon the reporting of crimes such as sexual assaults. If the only forum you offer a victim is the public forum, the long-term result will be the continued presence of sex offenders on our campuses.

In closing, I urge you to continue providing protection to all student records under FERPA, to allow disciplinary proceedings to remain closed, to remove counselors from the mandatory reporting requirements, and to not create a private right of action against universities.

It would also be detrimental to the financial stability of institutions to impose a penalty of 1 percent of their federal funds for any violations. This cost would ultimately be borne by the students.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to invite you and your staff to visit my department, which is 20 blocks from here, to see what a campus police department does to deal with crime on campus. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Dr. Bohmer.

Ms. Bohmer Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am very grateful to be given the opportunity to speak before you today.

I have been working in the area of sexual assault in general for over 20 years and have been working in campus sexual assault for a number of years, and I published a book a few years ago on the subject of campus sexual assault. For that reason, I am going to address most specifically areas of sexual assault on campus, although some of the things I say I think apply to campus violence in general.

I think we are all agreed that this is a serious problem, and I think that we can go on from there. It is a concern of parents, of university officials and many other people as well.

What I would like to address, however, is the fact that most of what people know about sexual assault comes from those cases that are reported; and it is my belief that they do not represent the typical situation that takes place on college campuses. In fact, most of the cases on college campuses are simply not reported at all. The lion's share of victims do not tell anybody or, if they do tell anybody, it is a friend. They do not go public under any circumstances.

I think that is something we really need to keep in mind if we want to protect the victims. We need to encourage them to report, rather than do something that might risk reducing the reporting rate.

I would like to give you a couple of what I view as more typical scenarios of the kind of thing I see most frequently.

In most of the cases, as Mr. McPherson pointed out, people know each other. The case of the stranger who comes in from the outside is the unusual case. The typical case is the students who decide to do their homework together and go to his or her dorm room. He thinks this is an invitation, and she thinks it is a situation in which they are going to do homework.

Another very typical case I hear about, I get lots of phone calls in September, are of the cases where some young woman, straight from, often, a fairly protected, possibly a rural environment, comes to campus, away from home for the first time, has very little experience of the world. She is invited, with some friends, to a party. She is invited to drink what is politely called punch at the party. She drinks it, has no idea what is in it, what is going to happen to her, and, as a result, she gets drunk. Other people at various points who are more sophisticated leave. She is still there in the evening; and she is a case where she is assaulted by one person or, in some cases, by many.

Those are the cases one hears of more often, not the cases where somebody breaks in from the outside and commits a rape on a stranger. The reason I think that is very important is measures we take to address the stranger cases don't address the cases that I view as more typical. So I think we need to be very careful when we look at this bill that we keep in mind what is going on at college campuses.

I think that colleges and universities find it much easier to deal with the stranger cases. They do what I like to call likes and locks. That is all terrific. It is very important. But it is not the only aspect of this.

I think what needs to be done is colleges and universities need to be given the opportunity to help themselves. So we need to be careful with these bills, that things don't backfire.

I agree with Miss Stafford that some of the issues in the bill that is being debated will make victims even more reluctant to come forward, and so I am very concerned that be kept in mind. Anything that increases the likelihood that a victim's identity will be made public may risk reducing the rate of reporting by victims.

Of course, that is one of those awful mixed benefits, because colleges and universities can then say they don't have any sexual assault on campus because nobody comes forward; and of course that isn't true. But we need to try to avoid anything that will encourage schools to play down their statistics.

I don't, however, believe that colleges and universities are engaged in some kind of malevolent wish to sweep everything under the rug. I think many of the problems with the reporting law and with how cases are handled, once they have taken place, comes from confusion, inability to understand many of these rules, exactly what the reporting requirements are. I think we already know that, and this is a very important part of this hearing, it seems to me.

I do, however, believe it is very important, as more than one other speaker has mentioned, that we make clear that FERPA doesn't apply to disciplinary records. I am a bit concerned about publicizing the names of people who are arrested rather than convicted, but I am very happy with the idea that people who are found guilty at campus hearings have that placed on their record.

I know of some cases where somebody transfers from one institution to another and starts again with a lovely clean slate, because the school doesn't believe it has a right to let the new school know on the transcript that this person has been found guilty of a sexual assault. That is how sexual predators get to travel and continue misbehaving or committing crimes on other college campuses. I think it might be very helpful if somebody were designated on every campus as the official in charge of the reporting.

One of the things that is clear is that people don't know what to do, what is happening. There is more than one person involved. If all of that could be centralized, I think that would be helpful.

I also think it would be helpful for somebody who is handling campus violence in general those campuses that have sexual assault coordinators have a good position. Because campuses often don't know how to handle the cases, and judicial proceedings are very often run badly because nobody knows what they are supposed to be doing, and that is a risky business. These are not legal proceedings, and that is something else people must be clear about. They are not supposed to be courts. They have a very different purpose. They are involved in fact-finding of a different kind, and I think that is important as well.

I have two quick suggestions, in addition, that it would be very helpful if colleges could learn of model programs, both for the handling of the cases, once they have occurred, and also for education and prevention. There are a number of programs out there. Some have been mentioned, already; and it would be helpful if they could be publicized. It might be useful to have a panel of experts who can evaluate them and disseminate them to campuses, the ones that seem to be the best, both in terms of handling cases that have taken place and education and prevention.

The last thing is I think the highest levels of each college and university need to be made aware this is a problem. Because my experience is the people lower down very often are doing a fine job and are concerned, but sometimes this concern is not mirrored at the highest level of administration. We need to make it clear that college presidents and provosts are aware that this is a serious issue and that they need to take a stand and that, from then on down, the whole institution can then take these matters seriously.

Thank you very much.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Mr. Clery, in your testimony, you require a minimum penalty of 1 percent total for funding for schools that violate the campus security.

Mr. Clery. Yes, sir, that is correct. Part of that is based on an important study. The only empirical study I have seen yet, conducted by the University of Cincinnati that there is broad-based noncompliance with the law.

Chairman McKeon. Excuse me. Were you including tuition in that?

Mr. Clery. Was I including tuition?

Chairman McKeon. In that penalty?

Mr. Clery. One percent of all federal funding.

Taxpayers are paying $57.3 billion, as I understand it, this year for higher education. We expect a system of accountability from the education community. We do not expect overregulation. I think that is a red herring in the context of student safety.

Chairman McKeon. I think we just need to clarify what you are including in that. Do you think that schools would not raise their tuition to make up for the amount that they are penalized and would that then be a penalty on students, rather than on the schools?

Mr. Clery. It certainly is a penalty on the schools. It is to discourage all of them from playing games with their crime numbers. Would they be able to increase their tuition during a competitive situation? The market is going to determine whether or not they have room to increase.

Chairman McKeon. Some of the hearings and some of the things we have looked at in this last year, I am not sure how competitive the market is. I have found, and I think other members of the committee have seen this in the hearings we have held, that some schools no matter what they raise their tuition to, they would still have all the students that they could handle. But we will look at that.

Miss Paulk, with respect to opening police logs, what steps would be taken to protect the identity of victims in order to protect them from unwanted publicity and potential harassment from friends of the accused?

Ms. Paulk. Well, I can only speak on behalf of what my newspaper did and myself as a police reporter did. The Athens Clarke County Police, which is the police department that handles crime in the Athens Clarke County area, where the University of Georgia is located, and the campus police at the University of Georgia had an open police logs policy. They did not include victims in those police reports. If there was an assault, the name of the victim was not included; and, therefore, it was not reported.

I hope that answers your question.

Chairman McKeon. So you wouldn't open it up to the victims, just the accused.

Ms. Paulk. There are times when the name of the victim it comes out, but the obit in the initial report, no. I am only speaking on behalf of myself.

Chairman McKeon. That is what we are trying to get understand. We are not trying to get anything other than information here.

Miss Stafford, other than posting warnings in every building on campus, what other steps do you take to notify students when the potential exists that they might become victim of a violent crime?

Ms. Stafford. When there is a crime that occurs that is of a serious nature, we post a crime alert in a hundred locations on campus. We notify the campus newspaper. Typically, we not only put it in the crime log, but they will write an article about it. Usually, the front page.

I have meetings once a week with the campus press. I give them all of the information that I can give them, as long as I am not jeopardizing someone's safety. I give them the information, as long as I am not jeopardizing an investigation. There are times when we are investigating something where we might not provide them with all of the details. But I will be honest with you. I typically tell them, there is more information; I can't share that with you right now.

Chairman McKeon. But you put out enough to indicate there is danger and try to alert them.

Ms. Stafford. Absolutely.

Chairman McKeon. How many students are on the GW campus?

Ms. Stafford. Approximately 6,000 undergraduates and 12,000 graduate students.

In addition, on a biweekly basis, regardless of the types of crimes that occur, I publish what we call a public safety advisory; and I notify the campus community of any trends that are occurring. We publish that biweekly; and, we post it in about 250 locations on campus.

Chairman McKeon. I see my time is up.

Mr. Kildee.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly appreciate this panel this morning.

I had three children in college at the same time, and I worried about them. They went to very good schools, but things can happen even in very good schools.

I certainly admire the courage of the parents who are here this morning. I know that is very difficult, and I admire you for being here.

Let me ask this question of Ms. Stafford. How common is the level of security that you find at George Washington University? How common is that among other universities and colleges throughout the country?

Ms. Stafford. I believe it is fairly common, to be honest. I think a lot of my colleagues in this profession take this very seriously. We take campus crime very seriously. We have organizations like IACLEA where we meet on a regular basis to talk about different programs and services that we are offering on our college campuses and to share that information.

For example, George Washington University, we have an escort program at night where we escort over 30,000 students every year. We have a defense program, which is a 12-hour self-defense program that we operate.

We operate over 100 crime prevention programs every academic year, and approximately 50 of those programs are within the first 2 weeks that the freshmen get to our campus. We meet with every single freshman in the residence halls, when the Residential Assistants have the initial meeting. We have crime prevention officers in the meetings, and the Columbian College, one of the schools within our university, has a 1 hour credit course that students must take. In that course we teach crime prevention principles and practices on campus.

Mr. Kildee. We used to have what we called the national diffusion network to share the best ideas. Do you have something similar to that on campus security?

Ms. Stafford. Absolutely. Through IACLEA, we share ideas. We do it formally. We do it informally.

Mr. Kildee. Although I know many of the assaults don't involve guns, guns were mentioned in the testimony here today. What generally is the gun policy at George Washington University?

Ms. Stafford. No one is allowed to have guns, not even me.

Mr. Kildee. Do you have zero tolerance?

Ms. Stafford. Yes, zero tolerance.

Mr. Kildee. How common is that among other universities and colleges in the country?

Ms. Stafford. I believe that is very common. I don't know of any of my colleagues campuses that allow guns.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you.

Miss Bohmer, last week the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio colleges must divulge their disciplinary files to the public. What effect do you think this might have on the crime in any Ohio colleges and universities?

Ms. Bohmer. I think it is a good idea to do it.

As I said, I think that the records, at least the information about what happened, the outcome, with the protection of the victim, will be a very helpful thing. It doesn't solve the problem, however; but it is one way of at least alerting people to who on campus has been found guilty of a crime.

Mr. Kildee. What percentage of colleges and universities belong to IACLEA?

Ms. Stafford. There are over 900 institutions that are formally members of that organizations.

Mr. Kildee. What percentage would that be? I should have the figure here someplace.

Mr. Clery. I think we have 3,600 institutions nationwide that are federally funded; so about a third, roughly.

Mr. Kildee. Mr. Clery, if you were sitting up here writing the laws, what priorities would you recommend in changing the laws?

Mr. Clery. Well, my priority be to would first ask myself why is the college community still operating under a futile type system, when the rest of us have accountability with a system of checks and balances for what we are doing?

Why do we have confidential hearings? I realize they are not judicial hearings, but we have too many. In a school context, the worst thing that can happen is suspension or expulsion of the student. We understand that. But I think I would be concerned with all of the victims that were beginning to speak out.

Cherone Thorpe, for instance, raped in the dormitory of Virginia State University, her perpetrators were given a violation of dormitory curfew sanction. In Kristy Brzonkala's case, it was a 1-hour video, ultimately.

I am very concerned about that. There is no educational value there. That is compounding the trauma of the victim.

So you really need to open up those chords so that there is a balance, there is an understanding about what serious crimes are occurring on campus.

With all respect to Ms. Stafford, and I think most security departments do a great job, the security departments are being circumvented by campus administrators. She doesn't know how many rapes were reported to the counselors. In Moorhead's case, they had 35 sexual assaults and 25 physical assault cases, yet they reported one sexual assault in their annual statistics and one aggravated assault. They lost all the other numbers.

Again, I think law enforcement on campus is doing a good job, but they are kept in ignorance.

We have got the Local 1792 from New York supporting this bill, and they say specifically our members needed a bare minimum of basic information indicating what is truly happening on our campuses. Without this, our every effort to proactively plan and act to keep students, faculty, staff and visitors safe on our campuses is crippled. The student press is crippled.

So the first question I think I would ask is, why do we have a system of such secrecy?

Mr. Kildee. Knowledge is power, isn't it?

Mr. Clery. But I would qualify one situation. Sexual assault, rape, is a very serious and debilitating crime for people. I think that the rape shield law, as the best of those state laws, should be incorporated and mandated, meaning that the sexual assault victim's name is not released at any time up to the point of the hearing; and that during the hearing, they can't ask her about her past sexual history or did you enjoy it and those types of aggravating questions that usually don't have any bearing on the case.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you. I thank the panel.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Mr. Castle.

Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also thank the panel and, of course, the mothers of the victims.

This is a very serious subject and a very difficult subject, and I really think that we need to keep arriving at answers. But my impression, and perhaps all of you can answer this or maybe one of you can try to answer it.

My impression is that there has been much more focus on this in recent years, maybe in the last decade, than there was previously, maybe because of the efforts of a lot of you in this room, and the campus security efforts have at least advanced. I am not in any way suggesting we shouldn't go further and do other things. Would anybody disagree with that? Would anyone say it is regressing?

Why don't you answer that, Dr. Bohmer?

Ms. Bohmer. I think you are absolutely right. It is one of those issues that has come to light, and increasing information is still becoming available. People are now doing some research to find out exactly what is going on and how the cases are dealt with.

I think people are now aware in ways they never were. People just assumed that nothing happened, and we are now aware that that is not true. Just as there is crime in the community, so is there crime on the campus.

Mr. Castle. Let me ask this question. Ms. Stafford may have to answer some of these questions, but I was curious about crime on campus versus the community. I would assume that city schools, of which GW is one, have a greater incidence of crime, not necessarily because of the students in any way but because of the access to the campus by people who would pick on the students.

First of all, I assume that is correct. If it is not, correct me on that.

If it is correct, are separate statistics kept on that and are those matters handled entirely differently versus student-on-student crime? Somebody from Washington committing a crime to somebody on campus?

Ms. Stafford. Absolutely. I think they are handled differently regardless of whether it is an urban or rural college.

For instance, if a crime happens student to student on our campus, depending on the severity of the crime, we are sworn. We have the authority to arrest that student, the perpetrator. Typically, in the minor offenses, we will send that to our Judicial Affairs Office.

If the person who commits the crime is a non-campus person, the majority of the time we arrest that person and the majority of the time we also bar that person from our property so that they can never come back.

I have provided, as part of my testimony, some copies of our annual report as well as a copy of the timely notice that we put out to students when a crime occurs so that you can see the statistics.

Mr. Castle. It is difficult to enforce because part of your property are public streets and walkways.

Ms. Stafford. Absolutely, and being in the District of Columbia makes it even more difficult because we do not have concurrent jurisdiction with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), which puts us in a position that we respond to things. But when it happens on the street, we constantly have to call MPD to back us up.

Mr. Castle. I wasn't going to ask this question but, very quickly, do you and do other colleges work on their relationships with community police? That has always been a huge problem over the years, the lack of coordination and differing views with how to deal with crime on campus. Is that being worked on in conferences and discussions?

Ms. Stafford. Community policing, is that the question?

Mr. Castle. The city police, for instance, in Washington, D.C., versus what you are doing with your campus police, that relationship. I am asking about all colleges, if you have knowledge of that.

Ms. Stafford. I do have knowledge of that, and I believe all colleges are trying to build better relations with their city police departments.

For instance, we just started a joint patrol program with MPD; and they are coming to campus once per shift per hour and patrolling with our officers.

Mr. Castle. Let me ask another question. It is something you said in your testimony, at least my notes show this. I think it is important because I think it is important that we in Congress take steps to make it stronger if we can but not overdo it to the point it is so bureaucratic that it becomes counterproductive to everything.

But you said it would not be, I think, problematic to report incidents of drugs, and I am really focused on liquor and weapons, by the way, I congratulate all colleges on their no guns or weapons on campus policy. That is a good idea.

But you indicated that the language should include incidents requiring enforcement action. I mean, at some schools, there is a lot of alcohol incidents; but alcohol, on the other hand, leads to many of the most serious problems that we have, so we really have to pay attention to it. But if you reported each incident that came along, that could require tremendous reporting as well.

But it is very confusing to me because my judgment is, in many ways, alcohol may be the most serious problem on campus; but it is also the one that is probably the most, and, again, maybe you could answer this, but if you count it as an incident or a crime, the thing you have to deal with the most on the college campuses. That whole area to me is very important for us to straighten out, and I would be interested in the comments of any of you on that subject.

Ms. Stafford. I agree that alcohol is a problem on college campuses. My comments were directed toward the fact that the current Campus Security Act only requires us to report arrests. My comments on that are I don't have a problem reporting incidents, rather than arrests, because campuses typically don't choose, for underage drinking, as an example, they don't choose to prosecute that student. Typically, we put them through the judicial system. We don't do that in an effort to keep our crime statistics down. The fact of the matter is that, at GW, we started 2 years ago reporting the incidents.

Mr. Castle. I know my time is up, but how do you define an incident?

Ms. Stafford. When it is reported to us.

Mr. Castle. But you don't go into a fraternity party and look for instances.

Ms. Stafford. We patrol the areas, absolutely. We are proactive. If there is a fraternity party that is being held that isn't within the guidelines of the university, we are going to take action. We are not going to wait for someone to call us to report it. That is proactive policing.

Mr. Castle. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Miss Woolsey.

Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for putting together this excellent panel. You have been very informative to us.

Thank you, parents, for coming. This must be very, very painful. I can't imagine what this must be like.

I have four children. One of my sons was an All American honorable mention college tackle. He was a big man. As he grew and grew and grew from high school through college, he became very aware, how his size intimidated not only women but men also.

Knowing that and having lived with it myself and hearing from my colleagues and Mr. McPherson, I want to tell you, I think your summit is an excellent idea; not just for athletes but politicians and school leaders and campus leaders and victims and families of violence. I think we can accomplish something with that, and I support it.

Mr. McPherson, when is it going to happen and where and what do you hope?

Mr. McPherson. I am not familiar with the plan for the summit. I know that it was a presentation, a part of today's hearing to talk about the possibility of having it.

Ms. Woolsey. But they are going to work with you on it. Well, I think it is a great idea. Because you need everybody involved and those who could be intimidating, who have learned not to be intimidating, to speak up also.

Now one of my questions for the three, particularly Dr. Bohmer and Ms. Stafford is, isn't it important that we have standardized reporting so that people who are choosing college campuses know what kind of crime there is and how safe and secure that school would be? Wouldn't it be sad if only the good, responsible schools reported and those who were irresponsible went free?

Ms. Bohmer. I agree with you. I think the current system does exactly that.

Those most concerned, the people who are proactive, the people who are pushing for publicity of cases are the ones that have the highest reporting rates and also the ones that may look bad.

I also understand, as Mr. Castle pointed out, that schools in urban areas feel sort of hardened by it, because their crime rates, in part, are clearly connected to the environment in which they live, so that standardized reporting is a really terrific goal.

I think potential students and parents need to know that that is only one piece of information. When I look at a college campus, I want to know not only what their numbers are but how active the police are. I know some schools that are very concerned about sending out potential students with information about campus safety measures. All of those kinds of things need to be part of a package of which standardized reporting clearly is one element.

Ms. Woolsey. Thank you.

Ms. Stafford. I would agree that standardized reporting is important. In fact, in my testimony, I indicated that I don't believe colleges would have a problem reporting those crimes that have been added in H.R. 715 to those that we already report through the Campus Security Act.

However, I think one of the things that Mr. Clery said, that I don't know all the statistics on the college campus, I think if a person in my position is doing their job correctly they would be following the final rule of that legislation, of the original legislation, which states they expanded it to a local police agency or any official of the institution who has significant authority for student and campus activities.

I have taken it upon myself to write letters to every single administrator on our college campus, asking them if there were any crimes that were reported to them that were not reported to the University police department. If that was the case, I asked them to simply give me the date and the type of crime that occurred and the location that it occurred. They did that, and those statistics are in our crime document as well.

Ms. Woolsey. Without naming them.

Ms. Stafford. Without naming anybody, yes.

But one of the things people don't realize is, if you have a police department that is community-relations based, that is doing active patrol, the statistics are going to be higher. Because you are going to find crimes that, if you were sitting in your office, you wouldn't find them. There would never be a report.

So the way people look at statistics sometimes is skewed, and it causes some schools difficulty. Because you never know. The statistics could be high because there is simply more crime, but the statistics could be high because the colleges and the police departments are doing what they need to be doing.

Ms. Woolsey. Well, I congratulate you and what you are doing. Thank you very much.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Miss McCarthy.

Mrs. McCarthy. I want to thank you.

Having unfortunately lost a loved one due to violence, I can certainly understand how hard it is for the families to come here and testify. It wasn't too long ago that I was on the other side testifying.

We, as Congress, try to do our best, and sometimes it is extremely hard because it is a difficult situation. I know that we see violence in our grade schools, middle schools and high schools. Now, all of a sudden, we send our children off to college; and, for the first time, many students are away from home. Unfortunately, some of the biggest problems we see are drinking, drugs and this freedom that they think they can do anything.

Tolerance should not be accepted on any level, on any level. Unfortunately, that is education. We must educate our young people that when they go away that nothing will be tolerated. It is up to the universities to make sure that the drugs and drinking are not tolerated.

Ms. Stafford, you are doing a tremendous job. It is probably unfair to be grilling you, because you are here doing a great job of reporting, where other campuses might not be. I think it is important that administration certainly cooperate with you more than 150 percent and also for the students, to let them know.

We have to in some way, work with the students so they feel comfortable reporting the actual crimes. I don't know if we can legislate that, but we can try and work something out.

But, again, it comes back to educating our students, not to be afraid to stand up and say something has gone wrong. The message that has to go across this country to anyone is that we will not tolerate any kind of crime. That is what our message has to be.

We have to take back our country. I think there are too many good people in this country, and we shouldn't be held hostage by those who feel they can run around and do anything they want. So I commend all of you, because you have to fight. Your message will get across. Sometimes it just takes a long time. We will be here fighting for you.

Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I too want to congratulate the panel, and I thank all of the parents who have come here to testify and talk about their experiences. I know it is difficult for them to be here today, but it has been very impressive, and it certainly wakes everybody up to a situation that needs a lot of attention.

I also want to congratulate our fellow Congressmen who are not here, Congressman Sanders and Congresswoman Morella, because I think their idea of a summit is excellent. As a matter of fact, I am going to ask permission to submit this to my daughter, who is in the local legislature in Puerto Rico, to have it done at the local level. I think it is another way of bringing the community's attention closer to it. I think if we have other States do that, it will bring it from a national level and also from a local level.

I would like to also ask Ms. Stafford a couple of questions. Ms. Stafford, when you say you arrest somebody for committing a crime on the campus, does that mean you arrest them and deliver them over to the local police or are they charged with a crime locally or do you just deal with that institutionally?

Ms. Stafford. When we arrest somebody, we take them to the Metropolitan Police Department station in order to process that. We don't have the ability to process the paperwork at our facility, but we take them there and process the paperwork.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. So any time you determine a crime has been committed in the campus, you bring in the local police.

Ms. Stafford. We don't arrest people on every occasion. It depends on the crime. It depends on the circumstances. We have the discretion to arrest someone. We have the discretion to take a report and put it through our judicial services.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. So somebody might commit a crime and not be reported to the police on the campus.

Ms. Stafford. Oh, yes. For instance, if a student is, a good example would be if a student is found with alcohol and they are not 21 years of age. We do not arrest that student and give them a criminal record for the rest of their life for drinking underage, first offense.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. What if they have some cocaine on them?

Ms. Stafford. That is a serious crime. That is the discretion.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. There is no discretion on that one, is there?

Ms. Stafford. There is no discretion on drugs, no. If we find a student with drugs, we arrest them.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. I want to ask the question because, for the record, I went back to a school here in the mainland for a get-together. The person in charge of the school was talking to us; and the person was very proud of how her school handled the discipline in school. She indicated, for instance, that if a student had a little bit more to drink than he should have and he threw a snowball and broke a window and was making a nuisance of himself, he would be kicked out of the school for good. But if he gets caught with drugs, he would only be suspended temporarily until he was sent to an institution and got treated and sent back. I thought, my God, there is something wrong here.

Ms. Stafford. Well, we have cases in D.C. because of where we are located. A student will maybe have a joint of marijuana, and where we have attempted to arrest the student in the past. We have taken them to the U.S. Attorneys office, and they have not prosecuted the case. They don't have the time to deal with those types of issues.

Now if it is for sale or distribution of drugs, they want to see that case; but if it is for something they consider minor, they want us to handle it internally. There are a lot of schools in this same situation.

Mr. Romero-Barcelo. My time is almost up. I want to tell you, my son just graduated from George Washington recently. At least he had no problems. I am fortunate.

Ms. Stafford. I am glad to hear that.

Chairman McKeon. Mr. Ford.

Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your leadership on this issue.

It is good to see all the panelists here today. Certainly, Mr. McPherson, I was a big fan of yours when you were in college. I went to school in Philadelphia, but it was always particularly good to see a young African-American playing the quarterback at the helm of the team. I want to congratulate you for your leadership there and the role model you provided for young kids. In Memphis they are about to get a new football team and we have Steve McNair as the starting quarterback for the Oilers. I am sure you were an inspiration for him and a slew of other young folks around this nation.

To the other panelists dealing with these issues, I certainly want to echo the comment from my colleague from New York, Ms. McCarthy, and Ms. Stafford, for the hard work you and your colleagues and peers around this country do. Certainly to Mr. Clery, my heartfelt condolences still to you and your family as you endure the pain and the loss associated with the loss of your sister.

I would ask, however, to Dr. Bohmer and to Ms. Paulk, as you think about the current requirements that we have for universities to report, and I know the most recent, the National Center for Education statistics show that some of the crime reports remain stable.

I am really new to the issue, and I must say I have signed on to Representative Duncan's bill and have read some of the information surrounding really what was the impetus for Representative Duncan's bill, but I would be interested in hearing more from some of the panelists.

You have spoken very eloquently, Mr. Clery, on the issue. If you would provide me with a slight bit more elaboration, I would appreciate it, sir.

Mr. Clery. Thank you, Congressman. I appreciate the fact you brought that up.

Despite all the money that was spent on the Department of Education's one-time mandated congressional report and in contrast to the GAO report and the University of Cincinnati study, the Department didn't collect a single Campus Security Act document to compile their statistics and draw conclusions from it. Meaning, they did not look over a single crime report, read it and make a determination.

For instance, are all the administrators with significant responsibility contributing to this report? Too often, it is only the campus security department that is compiling the numbers for the annual report.

A lot of the crime, and, God knows, if 80 percent of campus crime is student on student as you say, well, 30 percent of that may be circumventing the campus security department, that means you have lost 24 percent of your statistics, right? Thirty percent times 80 percent is about 24 percent. You lost that.

Because it went from the housing department, whether it was dealing drugs or aggravated assault or a burglary stealing people's laptops and CDs and everything else they own in their dormitory isn't a petty theft. That is burglary, and that goes into the dean's office, and they claim it is confidential under FERPA.

I am afraid, though, a lot of money and time went into the Department's report, but they can't substantiate any of the numbers in it.

What really bothers me are questions 2 and 6 in that report. They specifically address school officials of significant responsibility. Were they reporting? You look at those questions, 2 and 6, 6 especially, and it is not treated anywhere in the report. I wonder why.

I would like to ask Secretary Riley, what are those statistics? Did you analyze them? And what are your comments?

You know, how many of the schools out there aren't including the counseling department, the housing department, the athletic department. Believe it or not, they will have some incidents that go straight to the dean's office.

Ms. Stafford, if you wouldn't mind commenting briefly on that issue. Dr. Bohmer, you look as if you want to speak.

Ms. Bohmer. I am not quite sure what your question is. Are you asking whether the…

Mr. Ford. Are additional requirements necessary in light of the fact that some of these crimes remain stable and…

Ms. Bohmer. I think they need to be clarified, as much as anything else; and I agree with Ms. Stafford, adding the crimes would be helpful. To me, a lot of the problems are that people are not counting them, not just because they are sweeping them under the rug but because they are not sure whether they have something, because of this decentralization, because there is no one individual person, that is why I suggest that somebody be assigned to be the person who is responsible and that there be very clear rules that Congress can set up about what a report is.

Now I am very concerned about people who talk to counselors being classed as reports, because you can rest assured victims will not go to counselors and they will not be given any help if that is a requirement.

With the exception of counselors, it seems to me people need to make clear to whom reports are counted as reports for these statistical purposes, and that clarification will do as much as adding requirements to get a clearer picture about what is going on.

Mr. Ford. If the Chairman will grant me 30 seconds to hear from Officer Stafford.

Ms. Stafford. I would echo what Dr. Bohmer said, and I would also indicate that the issue of statistics, it starts with the lack of clarity in the current Campus Security Act and the final rules and regulations that govern that, and the Virginia Tech incident recently is a perfect example of that lack of clarity, because the rules indicate that there is no specific rule on when an incident should be reported. If it occurs in, for instance, 1994, but the person doesn't report it until 1995, the rules simply say, go with what the University Crime Reporting system requires. Well, that system requires that you report for your statistics when it is reported, not when it occurs; but Virginia Tech was just publicized that they were not following the regulations because they published it in 1995, rather than for 1994. They did what they were supposed to do with regard to that issue, but the Department of Education has said that they did not do what they were supposed to do.

Mr. Clery. Congressman, one other comment in that regard. She is exactly right. The UCR categories are a problem for a lot of schools; they are not abiding by the definitions used by federal law enforcement, which is to give us a common denominator across the nation regardless of state laws.

I know of a number of police, campus police, who have told me, oh, yes, aggravated assaults get discounted into a simple assault. In the current Campus Security Act there is no simple assault, that disappears; you may have 30 of those on a campus in 1 year, it doesn't show up as manslaughter, whether it is negligent, non-negligent.

We now have students, Frostburg State University, some of the guys who are beating on their pledges, forcing them to drink a fifth of whiskey, eat dog food and go through all sorts of ridiculous, self-degrading rituals. Fortunately, they are being charged for manslaughter but that is not a category, so there is none reported. You may have scores of students dying every year from fraternity rituals.

Of course, larceny is the biggest problem on campus. That wasn't part of the statistics; it needs to be included. Arson, believe it or not, is a problem on campuses at different schools. So we have rounded off the UCR categories. But what is imperative is, the schools have got to start using them and they have to know that they have to abide by those definitions.

Mr. Ford. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the extra time.

Chairman McKeon. One thing hit me, when you said "scores of students dying every year," was that just…

Mr. Clery. Is that arbitrary?

Chairman McKeon. Where did you get that number?

Mr. Clery. Where do I get "scores" from all of these?

Chairman McKeon. How many is a score? A score is 20.

Mr. Clery. It is a six; five dashes and one across, that is a score.

Chairman McKeon. I thought a score was 20.

Mr. Clery. Oh, excuse me.

Chairman McKeon. So scores would be 40, 60, 80, students dying.

Mr. Clery. I don't think it is that high. I would estimate, on the reports I see, I would say over a dozen or 2 dozen.

Chairman McKeon. If one dies, it is a serious problem. But for the record, I just wanted to clarify that number.

Mr. Clery. I am sorry. I didn't use the proper definition of score.

Chairman McKeon. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Roemer.

Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I too want to thank the panel for your expertise. Certainly, as Members of Congress, we are constantly seeking panels to come before us and give us insight into some very complicated issues that we deal with, and I want to personally thank everybody on this panel, who has testified before us.

And I want to thank those family members behind you. It is probably even more difficult for you to be here today;. Even though you are not officially testifying, your presence here is very important to us, both as Members of Congress and as parents. We want to seek the best information we can to make campuses safer, but also to make it so that those students that are going to pick campuses in the future have a right to know about what is taking place on those campuses now.

There are some very sensitive and difficult legal and even religious questions that are raised when you talk about this legislation, such as the dissemination and the collection of this type of information. So I would have two questions for a couple of the panelists.

The Ohio State supreme court recently ruled, according to Education Daily Today, that under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, that while educational records will continue to be protected, disciplinary records will not, and that they can be opened up.

The first question is, do you agree with that particular ruling?

The second question is, according to the Duncan legislation, H.R. 715, on the second page, counselors are part of the line of people who will then report information to people like Ms. Stafford. I represent nine universities; a number of them are religious schools. Let me give you a scenario. Let's say a young woman who has been sexually assaulted goes to her counselor, who happens to be a nun, and she says, I have been sexually assaulted, I am coming to tell you about it, and get counsel from you. Is that religious counsel that she is getting from that nun? Does that nun have to then pass that information forward? Some very complicated questions of confidentiality, of constitutionality, and legal, ethical questions arise from that.

Please give me some insight on that; what are your feelings about those two questions?

Mr. Clery. Congressman, the Department, I really have to give them a tremendous amount of credit; this has been a difficult law for them to work through, and it is already in the regulations. A counselor is only giving up statistical information, they are not divulging names, Social Security numbers, or personal identification numbers assigned by the college. They are responsible to know the UCR categories, according to this, but it is already in the regulations; they are supposed to be contributing that data, and they are not doing it.

Mr. Roemer. And the Ohio State supreme court decision?

Mr. Clery. I am thrilled with that decision, and of course you have the Georgia supreme court decision that was used as a precedent; and I think if the Congress fails to look at that ruling and adopt it, then we are going to have FERPA litigation ranging state to state into the next century.

Ms. Bohmer. I agree, I think it is important this be clarified on a national level, and as I have said in my testimony, I think it is important disciplinary records are not called educational records, because as long as they are carefully revealed, then they provide information that the public needs to know about.

The other question, the issue of confidentiality, as I mentioned, I think that is a real problem; and the problem with the statistical issue is that while that is indeed true, it depends on how much information is revealed and how it is revealed. Sometimes you don't have to reveal the victim's name.

Mr. Roemer. What do you mean, "sometimes"? Mr. Clery would disagree with that; you say sometimes the name has to be revealed.

Ms. Bohmer. I am saying if you don't reveal the name, you can reveal information that will make it clear who the person is anyway; and that is going to have the chilling effect that one of the other panelists has mentioned, and that is why I am really concerned about that.

Mr. Roemer. How do you protect that from happening?

Ms. Bohmer. You try to make sure that people, when they do reveal statistics, are careful about not revealing additional information if the victim doesn't want them to. You also try to encourage the victim, and I have seen lots of schools where this happens, you encourage the victim to go public. You cannot force somebody to do that, but a school that has an atmosphere that handles this carefully and seriously is much more likely to have victims that go public; and that is all a part of this package. We need to try to encourage this process.

Mr. Roemer. Ms. Stafford, do you want to try to answer that question from the perspective of if you get the report up from a counselor to you. I appears from you testimony that you do proactive policing and I am delighted to hear that. Do you do proactive counseling with the people that report these kinds of things to you, and how do you report them, protecting confidentiality?

Ms. Stafford. Do we do proactive counseling?

Mr. Roemer. My first question was on FERPA; the second question was on confidentiality and religious protections and so forth.

The scenario I laid out was, and Dr. Bohmer, I think, reiterated this, what if somebody, in terms of reporting this as a statistic, goes much further than reporting statistical information, but actually goes and gives information on who this person is that makes it very easy to identify them. Are there ways that you can make sure that we don't do those kinds of things if the victim does not want to be identified? As Dr. Bohmer said, maybe we try to encourage them to go public, but if they don't want to be, how do we protect them?

Ms. Stafford. Well, I would say, that depends on the disciplinary record issue. You know, if it is reported to us, then it is on our official incident report. Our official incident reports go to the dean of students office; they get a copy of the report, and they deal with the report through judicial affairs. If it becomes part of the student's record and it is not under FERPA protection, then that information would be available to anybody who gets that part of the student's disciplinary record.

Mr. Roemer. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

I think that this, like many of our other hearings, has shown that there are more problems out there than we have the ability to handle in a short hearing like this. But there will be much more that we look into as we go through the process of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, and we want to thank you for being here and for your participation.

I would like to ask, Mr. Ford, are you a fan of J.C.'s, also, J.C. Watts?

Mr. Ford. I like Don McPherson better.

Chairman McKeon. You know, when J.C. was playing, he was a Democrat.

Mr. Ford. I can imagine. He was a Blue Dog, though, that is what I heard.

Chairman McKeon. These are some inside jokes here that we probably shouldn't have gotten into. But I do want to thank each of the panelists for being here, for your testimony today.

Are you trying to say some more, Mr. Clery?

Mr. Clery. Chairman McKeon, I hope this is not out of line, but would it be possible to let Stella Goldberg, she has a comment that she feels emphatic that she be able to speak for just a moment. Her daughter was murdered at Carnegie-Mellon.

Will you allow that, sir?

Chairman McKeon. For just a moment.

Mr. Clery. Stella.

Ms. Goldberg. Thank you for that courtesy.

Chairman McKeon. If you can step to the mike, please.

Ms. Goldberg. I came here today from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be with my friends, the Clerys, and to support my associates, mothers of murdered children.

I would like just to mention that I heard the word "minor." Gentlemen, ladies, I would like to give you my opinion on the word "minor." There is nothing minor about underage drinking and the use of drugs on any college campus in the United States of America. Or anywhere else for that matter, but I am an American citizen; I am speaking for my country.

The fact that we want to protect the children, the college students, and we want to prevent crimes is a big issue. But I think the bigger issue is to take in hand the student that chooses to come out of high school, which is a chore in itself and a remarkable achievement, and then be accepted into a college, university, and the moment that that student decides to break the law, which is underage drinking and the use of drugs, they should be suspended immediately. If after that, they are accepted back, and they choose to make the same mistake again. They should be kicked out and not allowed to come back.

Because once our girls and boys, children, are murdered, there is no more hope for them; but maybe some of this could be cut down if the person that has misused their privilege to be in college is stopped.

I support the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act from 1997, H.R. 715. Let me just say on behalf of these ladies behind me, when a child or another loved one is murdered, the anger and guilt and confusion is complicated by the realization that another person intentionally took the life of someone we loved, and that is the ultimate misery of any parent. Just to mention, we know that we cannot turn every danger away, we know we can't fix everything perfectly, but if the students who are misbehaving. We send our kids to college.

I sent my daughter to college, another daughter, to Brandeis University. I am a widow, and it cost me $100 grand. I didn't work and mortgage my home and deny myself so many privileges for my daughter to lie, cheat, steal and drink. I sent her there to study, and the moment anybody does anything to interfere with my child's education, they should be stopped, cut down and kicked out of college.

I have a victim's impact letter from this girl, which is so heartbreaking and so heart-rending that I would certainly challenge anyone here today if they read it, they would break down and cry. Just to tell you this, you don't forget a murdered child. It stays with us, it cripples us, it defeats our purpose to live our ongoing lives. We have to be strong, we have to be tough, we have to be the strength of a mountain to go on and be strong enough to continue to help our other children to go on.

It breaks a family. It debilitates us. It cripples us, not just the mother and the father, but all the rest of the family, just as Connie, her sons, her husband, who is suffering like no father could ever suffer.

So that is what I came here to say today, and anything that can be done to pass this law, this bill into law, would be greatly appreciated on behalf of my daughter, who is dead at 20, because somebody chose to drink, didn't know what the hell they were doing, and just stabbed her 20 times. They didn't even know her. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After all of this is over, then they turn around and they allow the criminal to sue us. I am not going to go into that. You have already been more than courteous and given me more time than I ever thought I would have, but I have a paper here, Lawsuit Seeks to Foist Blame Away from Killer. Who the hell are they going to put it on, me? I am a mother, raised four children; I am a widow.

I think I have said enough. Thank you for your time, and God bless us all because we surely need it. Thank you, sir. Thank you, everyone.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. I think any of us who are parents feel somewhat the way you feel, but none of us can really, truly know what you feel until we have gone through that experience. But I think we feel the pain that you have expressed here today, and we are concerned. It is hard enough hearing some of these things.

We will be working on this. We appreciate your being here. If you think of something that you haven't been able to put in the testimony, that you have thought of today, if you will get it to us, we will put it in the testimony. Please continue to work with us as we go through the process of reauthorizing this act.

That will conclude this panel at this time. We will take a few minutes to break and ask the second to come forward. Thank you.

[Recess.]

Chairman McKeon. This will be a real change of pace of the second panel from the first panel, but they are all important parts of reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. I spoke earlier about the second panel, so in the interest of time, we will get right into this. We have been told that we will probably have a vote in about the next 20 minutes to half an hour, so I would really like to get your testimony in before we have to leave for the vote.

We will hear first from Dr. Peter Armacost, President of Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida; Deborah Dunn, Executive Vice President of Yorktowne Business Institute, we will hear next from Jane Stewart, Director of Federal Relations, Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority from Frankfort, Kentucky, then Ms. Dunn, from York, Pennsylvania; then finally Ms. Nancy Willie-Schiff, Associate in Higher Education, from the New York State Department of Education in Albany, New York. I was up there a couple of weeks ago.

Let us hear first from Dr. Armacost.

Mr. Armacost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you said, I am Peter Armacost from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, but I am here today representing the National Association of Independent Colleges and the more than 900 members of our association. Our members fully support the need to be held accountable for their expenditure of public funds. At the same time, we urge Congress to approach the issue of accountability in ways that will preserve and protect the right of self-governance, which has been so important to the strength of American higher education through the years.

Justice Frankfurter once said that the core center to freedoms of any university are to determine for itself on academic grounds who shall be teaching, what shall be taught, how it should be taught and whom should be admitted to study. He went on to say, and for society's good, and I quote, government power must abstain from intrusion into this activity of freedom, except for reasons that are exigent and obviously compelling. Our members strongly agree with Justice Frankfurter, as new laws are written to deal with current problems, as officials attempt to write statutes and regulations that cover a vast array of diverse institutions in America's postsecondary education. It is easy to cross unwittingly the lines here noted, often with unintended and sometimes harmful consequences.

During my 30-year career as a college president, an overwhelming body of regulations has been developed. One recent study suggested there are as many as 7,000 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations dealing only with Title IV. Each, by itself, may make sense and serve a very legitimate purpose, but the combined impact of these statutory provisions, regulations, letters of implementation, mandated reports is a very large number of requirements that are overwhelming. They are complex and confusing, they are often conflicting, constantly changing and burdensome, and they are very costly and time-consuming to administer. By my own calculation, we spent over $432,000 a year that is simply compliance; that is roughly $303 per student, spent for compliance efforts.

We believe that you and Congress are ready to address the issue and for that we thank you.

Secretary Riley, in his testimony on June 19, indicated the Department's desire to simplify program delivery. We in the higher education committee have had good experiences with the Department recently in trying to work with them to improve regulations dealing with recertification, which was a good idea you had in 1992, and with financial standards. But let me highlight a number of suggestions discussed more fully in my written text.

First, we ask you in Congress to streamline the statute. We urge you to examine carefully every provision to be sure it is essential for good program administration and Title IV, that it is cost-effective, and that they are defined as narrowly as possible.

Second, Congress should require the Department to focus its resources on problem institutions and to differentiate among institutions on the basis of their performance in terms of Title IV program compliance. The vast majority of colleges are fully capable of sound Title IV administration. When that is found to be so in recertification, we recommend that you encourage the Department to recertify for longer than 4 years.

When a college is found to have resources that are so limited as to raise substantial doubt about its administrative capacity or financial stability, the Department should monitor the situation closely. In the few cases where there is deliberate fraud and abuse of Title IV programs, the Department should deal immediate and forcefully with those situations; they have the tools to do so.

Third, you should develop a system of cures for occasional and unintended errors. The volume and the complexity of regulations make it almost impossible not to make an occasional inadvertent error. Congress should make clear to the Department that when there is no pattern of error and no evidence of fraud or misconduct, the institution should be allowed appropriate ways to clear their record and correct their mistakes.

Fourth, the volume of current regulations itself is an impediment of effective oversight and accountability. We ask you to direct the Department of Education to sit down with the representative of the higher education community, in a consultative process to review all of the existing regulations, line by line, to simplify, to clarify, and to resolve contradictions among them.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to express our appreciation to you, our profound gratitude for your leadership in blunting the threat to institutional diversity and to fundamental freedom and independence of our college universities that was posed by SPRE. We applaud and support your efforts to delete this part of the statute, and we say amen to your efforts.

In conclusion, I would say America's colleges and universities accept their obligation to be accountable for their administration of public funds. We seek to work closely and cooperatively with Congress and the Department to simplify, clarify and reduce the conflicts among statutory requirements and regulations, and to focus more clearly on the essential provisions for the administration of Title IV programs. The end result of this consultative process will be strengthened oversight, more efficient use of government resources, more effective compliance with less cost to our colleges and universities, and a process of appropriate accountability, one that preserves the essential strengths of America's higher education that have made this the best system of higher education in the world.

Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Stewart.

Ms. Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Jane Stewart, and I am Director of Federal Relations for the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority. I am also beginning a 1-year term as Chairman of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs.

My testimony here this morning also represents the views of the Education Finance Council, the Consumer Bankers Association, the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, Sallie Mae, and the Coalition for Student Loan Reform. All of these organizations represent a nationwide network of participants in the FFELP, or Federal Family Education Loan Program, and are made up of providers that consist of guarantee agencies, secondary markets, lenders, loan servicers, collectors, and schools.

The FFELP program is the largest federal student financial assistance program in this country. Last year's volume was about $20 billion, and this year the program expects to serve some 92 percent of the Nation's postsecondary educational institutions, in whole or in part. We are here today to advocate regulatory reform, not regulatory relief. We believe that the federal government is obligated to ensure that the taxpayer funds are spent in an appropriate and efficient manner.

We believe that the FFELP community can take a larger role in self-regulation and maintain the importance of program integrity. In fact, we have already begun this process as evidenced by the numerous community initiatives that are outlined in our written text. These initiatives include the development of common forms, the development of common electronic processes and procedures, the development of a common policy manual by guarantee agencies, and the initiation of the process of the development of the ad hoc standardization committee, which is headed by Dallas Martin of NASFAA. In fact, as a community, we developed a single reauthorization position paper, which has already been submitted to this committee and appended to the testimony. We have accomplished a great deal, but we can do a lot more with help in the regulatory reform area.

Our principles for effective regulatory reform include, and I am going to highlight them very briefly, the first one is timeliness. The community initiatives have been frequently frustrated by lengthy review processes, and this prohibits our ability to be responsive to the needs of our clients and the students. A lengthy back-and-forth process, as evidenced in our text regarding a consolidation loan application, has taken over 3 years, and as a result, we have outdated forms, we have had to use a number of addenda just to bring the forms up to current law and regulation, and it is very confusing for the students.

To address the timeliness issues, we recommend strengthening the authority of the ad hoc committee on standardization, or some similar body, and that body would develop standard form formats and procedures and then the Secretary would have the opportunity to disapprove proposals in a reasonable time frame if he determines that those proposals are inconsistent with the act.

We also suggest a mutual benefit corporation or a similar organizational structure to support the delivery of Title IV-A utilizing modern technology.

The second guideline would be elimination of unnecessary regulations and using common sense in developing them, ensuring that the benefits far outweigh the cost and that regulations should be result oriented and should focus on clearly established goals. Some of the examples in our text include repayment options, as well as deferment and forbearance processing, and the paperwork required with each of those processes. The elimination of outdated or redundant statutory provisions which result in regulations that preclude modernization is important, and these would include the use of FAFSA as the application and any redundancy and oversight related to third-party servicer language, and the requirement for the secondary market plan for doing business, as already found within the tax code. We would suggest retraining regulatory oversight because the excessive regulations are inefficient and they are wasteful. They should be flexible enough to permit the use of advancements as they occur and should not lock participants into a certain procedure because the technology hasn't been developed at the time the regulation is promulgated. We believe regulatory oversight should be appropriate to protecting the federal fiscal interest of the participants.

Finally, we recommend that we take a fresh look at simplifying the entire remaining process after we eliminate the unnecessary provisions, that we allow participants appropriate ways to correct errors, and that we require negotiated rulemaking to ensure appropriate community involvement, that everyone brings their unique expertise to the table and develops a thoughtful and appropriate regulation.

We would limit the volume of subregulatory activities, such as Dear Colleague letters and private letters; they are certainly appropriate to explain guidelines, but it is inappropriate to use them for major policy changes. We recognize that the taxpayer interests do require federal oversight of a federal subsidized program, and we seek reform, not relief, to permit participants to operate efficiently and benefit students and schools.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Dunn.

Ms. Dunn. Good morning. I am here today as a representative of Yorktowne Business Institute in York, Pennsylvania, as a recently retired member of the Board of Directors of the Career College Association. As Executive Director of a school with a student body of 300 students, I know from personal experience the huge burden of regulations which postsecondary educational institutions face. I am very proud of our institution: Yorktowne Business Institute has a cohort default rate of 9 percent and, more importantly, an 80 percent graduation rate and a 92 percent placement rate.

As I begin, I would like to thank Chairman McKeon, Mr. Kildee and the committee for the outstanding work you have done on behalf of students. The regulations of the Department of Education have historically been highly detailed, complex and burdensome on the entire higher education community, and the process through which the Department promulgates regulations prohibits real input from students and educational institutions.

In my earlier testimony in York, I detailed the large number of regulations and policy interpretations that the Department had issued over 32 short months. It does bear repeating.

From January of 1994 through August, 1996, our schools received the following financial aid information: 152 Dear Colleague letters, 13 Pell Grant letters, 50 campus-based letters, 42 GSL/FFELP, eight SSIG letters, 47 Direct Lending letters and 113 Federal Registers, all of these from the Department of Education, providing new information, changed information, proposed regulation, final regulation and unfinal regulation, changes to the regulation updates and more. It is a total of 386 communications, or an average of 12 items per month to review and comprehend or risk being cited in an audit, and the number is quite large; but I will keep looking at that red light to make sure I stay within the guidelines, even though it is 386 documents.

After doing this count, I can also begin to understand why I seem to be spending less time with the students, less time reviewing curriculum, less time reviewing the latest updates and equipment and actually less time at home.

One area in which the regulations have been particularly burdensome is the tuition refund area. Eighty-eight amendments set out what is supposed to be a simple requirement for fair and equitable refund policy language was turned into a very complex and burdensome regulation, so complex the Department employees charged with enforcing it could not always follow or understand it. And if this were not bad enough, policy and regulations were subject to almost constant change. In a period of 24 months, the regulations changed three times and in no small way, beginning in July of 1993, the Department published its first set of regulations.

Just when we thought we understood those, 9 months later, a completely different set of regulations was published and 5 months later, more substantial changes were published and throughout this time, schools received Dear Colleague letters and other guidance with yet more changes. Financial aid administrators are spending an inordinate amount of time on this issue alone. Finally, after a year of trying not to hire an additional person, we find a need to keep up with the excess paperwork. Among other requirements, the statute requires schools to maintain sufficient cash reserves for refunds. Regulations require schools to maintain letters of credit in the amount of 25 percent of their prior years' refund liabilities; however, the statute does provide for an alternative and that is participation in an approved state tuition recovery plan. The department published criteria for implementation of this provision in November of 1994, but not one single plan has been approved.

In Pennsylvania, we have such a fund. It was established in 1993 to provide reimbursement to students of unearned tuition in the event of school closure. The current balance is $652,000. Since 1993, five schools which participated have closed, a total of 76 students from those schools chose to seek reimbursements, and they were reimbursed 98 cents on the dollar, but that plan has not been approved nor have any others that have been submitted and have been waiting for approval for 3 years.

Another very important example are the Department's mitigating circumstances standard for cohort default rate appeals. It is so unreasonable that the Department takes pride in the fact that not one single mitigating circumstance appealed has ever been granted. It is important to keep in mind that notices of proposed rule-making are sent, which invite comment. They will spend 2 years developing a rule in an amount of time that gives us 30 to 45 days to comment. In 17 days in September, we were sent six NPRMs and had to respond within 30 to 45 days; that is how we spent most of September. Later, when they changed the master calendar deadline and moved it, we received a 19-page NPRM, another 19-page NPRM, and a 64-page NPRM, all within weeks of each other. Again, we had to respond within 30 days; that is how we spent March. As you look through, we don't believe the result was intended by the Department, but in the rush to analyze the impact of all the proposals in a short period of time, mistakes are made that ultimately hurt students.

A very important one, and it is technical and difficult to explain, it is in my written testimony, is now we will have students who start school in August and September, when many high school graduates start school, that will not be eligible for Pell Grant in their second academic year simply because of the new definition of payment period, and that will cause them to actually incur greater debt because that is how they will have to pay for school.

In conclusion, I would like to focus on testimony on one recent issues, where it seemed the Department was truly trying to take regulatory reform to heart. Recent efforts of the Department in the new financial responsibility regulations have been a model of consultative rule-making. The beginning was not promising. They sent out a notice of proposed rule-making and after many, many serious comments, they decided to extend the deadline. Then they brought the community together.

The community was able to come together, talk with the Department, work with the Department, and try to come up with a pattern of what could be done with financial responsibility, and Secretary Longanecker himself attended these sessions and Deputy General Counsel, Jamie Studley, who chaired the sessions, and the staff of policy development should be commended. But the process can be used as a blueprint for a much improved regulatory model and there are just five quick elements in that part. There should always be sufficient time for thoughtful review. There should be a process for the affected community to exchange ideas. There should be a process for the community to react to the Department's proposed changes to make sure the solutions are real and not causing further problems. There should be a proprietary institution ombudsman in the Department to help the Department better understand the students and institutions in the sector. There should be an evaluation of the impact of the proposal on students in school to make sure the benefits outweigh the cost of the regulation. The agency should create an atmosphere of partnership.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. I urge you, in the consideration of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, to amend the law so we can spend less time attempting to comply with overly prescriptive regulations and more time with our important educational mission.

Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Ms. Willie-Schiff.

Ms. Willie-Schiff. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us to present a state perspective on regulatory reform in the Higher Education Act and other policy reforms which should be considered during the upcoming reauthorization.

I am Nancy Willie-Schiff. I am an Associate in higher education at the New York State Education Department. That department is the administrative arm of the New York State Board of Regents, which sets educational policy for our state. Our mission is to raise the knowledge and skills of all New Yorkers, and our unit serves as the coordinating board for postsecondary education. We have oversight, planning and policy responsibilities for a vast and diverse system of over 500 public and private postsecondary institutions, enrolling over 1 million students in more than 20,000 degree and non-degree programs.

In fulfilling our responsibilities over the years and as New York's former State Postsecondary Review Entity (SPRE), and I won't say the four letter word, we have gained considerable experience in dealing with institutional eligibility in Title IV. That experience has led us to make two points here today.

The first is that the states have an interest in well-managed Title IV programs, as we all do. New York invests something like $3.5 billion a year in higher education, and its needy students rely on another $2.5 billion, at least, in Pell and loan funds to pay for college. On behalf of those needy students and their families, we ask that any regulatory reform that is considered not erode the Secretary's capacity to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in these programs. The Secretary needs the statutory regulatory, fiscal and information tools that we find essential.

It was not too long ago that Title IV was plagued by scandals, high and rising default rates, and none of us wants to go back to that era. We believe the triad could be strengthened by increased information exchanges among the partners, but we believe that state licensing agencies and accrediting agencies, although one of our goals is to protect all students, including Title IV recipients, from unscrupulous or ineffective institutions.

It is not our primary function to protect Title IV funds; that is the primary responsibility of the Secretary of Education. We support streamlining in any way that reduces costs for institutions. We have worked with some of our institutions on the tuition refund issue; our only concern is there not be a loss of protection and erosion in support for these programs.

But on another level, our other point is, we believe the protection of Title IV funds is a necessary, but not a sufficient policy goal for the Higher Education Act. We believe at this point it is necessary to consider protecting the total national investment in postsecondary education. Title IV is important as it is, but it is only a part.

There are other federal investments, including upcoming tax expenditure investments. The states contribute something over $50 billion, the state and their localities, and there is a large and growing investment made by students and their families. We believe it might make sense to replace traditional, procedural regulations with the new regulatory approach that puts the emphasis on the public disclosure of institutions participating in Title IV of their performance in the area of student achievement, which is the real goal that the Title IV programs have.

The Higher Education Act already requires institutional disclosures; one was discussed this morning. There are requirements for crime statistics and graduation rates; we believe those should be extended.

We are not recommending a top-down approach. We think a broadly representative group could be convened to define consistent, standardized national indicators of postsecondary achievement. Nor are we recommending that statistics be used to set automatic thresholds or cutoffs to determine eligibility for Title IV. Our experience in the states has taught us that that simply would not work. The purpose of the indicators should be to inform consumers and to improve higher education, not threaten it.

We have found that nothing has focused the attention of our college faculty and administrators so much as the public disclosure of their students' achievement. This year, in New York, we released pass rates on teacher certification exams for all colleges that offer teacher education programs. We published those rates, including on the Internet, and we made site visits to provide technical assistance to colleges with low rates. Our actions have already led some of our colleges to make program improvements that will help students at the college level and at the K-12 level, and in some cases, the colleges have decided to eliminate programs that were beyond improving and, thus, eliminate costs.

It is true that performance statistics could be used by the Secretary, accrediting agencies and the States to identify institutions needing further review, including on-site visits, and could be used to make determinations about Title IV eligibility, but that would be a by-product. Our approach is already being used in many states. Half the states report publishing consumer information, and many report early successes. Accrediting agencies are doing the same; the American Bar Association is a primary example.

We know this will not be easy. The history of the Student Right-to-Know provision is telling. The disclosure requirements were enacted in 1990; it wasn't until 1995 that we had final regulations, and disclosures are not required until the year 2000 for 2-year colleges and the year 2003 for 4-year colleges, and that is just graduation rates. There was such an uproar in the community that that was delayed.

We have learned a great deal about doing performance information, and we believe there are many advantages to this approach. I see the red light has been on for some time, so I will stop now, but would be glad to answer your questions.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much. Much of the time in these hearings, I get very frustrated. I hear figures like $300 per student to require compliance. Now that was roughed off; what was the number again?

Mr. Armacost. $303. You are close.

Chairman McKeon. We are talking about a $300 increase in Pell Grants this year, and we could just eliminate regulations and save $300; if that were passed on to the students, we would all be better off, wouldn't we? We just set up a commission to look at the accelerating cost of higher education, and maybe we should have set up a commission to eliminate regulation.

I shouldn't say eliminate; I know we need regulations. If we didn't have that, how would we put people who write regulations to work?

But I guess the key word is "reform," not "relief." It seems like I helped start a family business many years ago, and of course when you start a family business, it was my dad and myself, we didn't need many regulations, we could talk to each other on the phone. We each ran a store and we could say, how is business today, fine; how is it in your store, fine. We didn't need regulations to tell us what to do.

As we grew and as other brothers came into the business, we were still able to handle it. But when we had to start hiring store managers, we found we would visit the store and tell the manager what to do and sometimes the manager would call us with a question, and we started finding that we were writing a book to answer some of these questions. As we got more stores and more managers and time went by, you would find every time there was a problem, you would write an answer, so that the next time they would have that. And it was funny; in the small family business, we started achieving a book of regulations.

I guess it happens everywhere, but now we are up to, did you say 7,000?

Mr. Armacost. Yes, sir.

Chairman McKeon. I want to get a copy of that. I want to spend the next week reading those regulations, maybe the next month, maybe the next year.

I like the idea of getting a group together in a collaborative process and seeing what regulations we can get rid of, line by line. The concern I have is that depending on how many people you had working on that, they would probably end up putting two lines to justify each line, and we would end up with even more.

This is a process. We will go through your written testimony, and you have each had some real good suggestions, and I hope when we finish this process, that we have not increased the regulations, and I have a personal desire to at least cut those 7,000 in half. The problem is they accumulate over a number of years and they seem to breed and add more, but if there were a way that we could say, look we have some pretty good people running the schools, about 7,000 schools I think we are talking about, and if we would just get off their backs and let them run the school, they know better how to do it than we do; and we are trying to sit here and write the regulations.

So I think you know where I am coming from. How we come out with this is going to be, I guess, a product of how well we are able to work together, and I think we are in sync on this, too. But it is not just two of us; we have the rest of the committee. They are all busy doing other things, and our committee has a bill on the floor right now; we should probably be there and involved in that.

But this is an interesting dilemma that we have, and I know that we have to have a certain amount of regulation and I know it is very important that we have, especially where the finances are involved, we have to make sure that we are avoiding fraud as much as we can. But the thing that I find is that those who are going to participate in that find ways around those regulations anyway. So it is something that we will have to really get into.

I see my time is up. Actually, she didn't reset it, so my time was up before it started. I am just doing that to embarrass you.

Mr. Kildee.

Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the higher education community is going to be well served, this year, because Mr. McKeon and I really work closely together. It helps to be good friends, too. Yesterday, as is custom, we had our breakfast. We meet at least once a month for breakfast to discuss higher education.

We really appreciate this panel, a good cross-section of higher education, and we are determined to try to make changes in response to some of the needs you have brought to our attention this morning.

In the last reauthorization, Rep. Bill Goodling and I put in mitigating circumstances, which we felt should mean something. Apparently it doesn't mean anything, because there hasn't been one case of mitigating circumstances. It is like hitting a grand slam home run and you find out the home team had five runs on the board before the game started, so it is not going to help you very much there. And I really think we have to try to look at mitigating circumstances specifically, because I believe there are mitigating circumstances; and I want to work closely with you on that.

You know, as a policymaker, it is often difficult to strike a balance between the necessity for accountability and the need for simpler and less burdensome regulations. Do you have any suggestions on how we can achieve both? We want to have the accountability, and yet when you find out it is costing $303 in regulations it is clear something must be done. I hope you can help us find if way to strike that balance.

Any suggestions as to how we can get a better balance?

Mr. Armacost. I think the starting point in my response to that question, Mr. Kildee, would be to focus on the specific task of government in this case, which is to determine the administrative capability and financial responsibility of the institutions to protect students from situations in which their money might not be wisely used; and taxpayers, to protect them, which to me means to trust the triad and to make that work better.

I don't think the concept is wrong. The implementation has not always been what it could have been, and I think you sent a wake-up call in 1992 that has been very good for the higher education community. Accreditation is working much better now than it did before.

But I think if you focus on what is the government's responsibility and leave to the states and leave to accrediting what can be better done in that setting, I think that is the first key to simplification.

Mr. Kildee. Does anyone else have any comments on that?

Ms. Stewart. I have a comment. I think one way to strike the balance is to identify the goals up front through a consultative process, something like negotiated rule-making or some kind of process. Once you identify what the goal is, it is often easy to find a result that is mutually agreeable to everyone and meets the needs of everyone.

A lot of the confusion and the complexity that has occurred has been, I think, that perhaps we haven't sat down and held those discussions, that perhaps the comments from the folks who administer the program on a day-to-day basis weren't really understood in the written notice-and-comment process, and it helps to talk those things through.

Mr. Kildee. Ms. Dunn.

Ms. Dunn. I think I would like to reiterate again, if there could be a more collaborative effort. It is very difficult. I am confused as to how we can receive an NPRM, respond to it, and how the Department can read all the responses and use that communication in what we try to do to help them write a better regulation. Sometimes I have to wonder if it is read. I get the feeling I am sending it to the Department of Education, and it ends up in a box someplace; because the final rule is published, and it appears that nothing was included.

So if the NPRM process stays, it really needs to be reviewed or changed or developed in such a way it is more collaborative, because I believe right now, personally, that it is just something that is paper. There is no depth to it.

Mr. Armacost. If I can put a footnote on that, I think the earlier in the process the consultation begins, the more likely it is to result in streamlined regulations and less duplication and lack of clarification.

Ms. Willie-Schiff. I would just add that we support the clear definitions in the triad and the lack of redundancy and the communication among the parties in the triad as one way of eliminating the redundancy.

Mr. Kildee. Several of you mentioned the triad. I do think we have built in things with that triad. The Department of Education should never be looked upon as your master. Sometimes I think some within the Department look upon themselves as your master. I mean, you are the ones that are delivering the educational services, you are the ones that we need; and sometimes it is an attitudinal thing.

Can I ask just one brief question further?

Chairman McKeon. Sure.

Mr. Kildee. Are there any specific ways we can help make negotiated rule-making more effective? We have put that in there, and yet, how much negotiation really takes place, how negotiated is it? Is it again a question of attitude in departments? Any thoughts at all?

Mr. Armacost. To be truthful, I am not close enough to that process personally to give you a good answer. I would like very much the chance to give you an answer in writing if I might.

Mr. Kildee. That would be fine, if you could reflect upon that, because we do accept testimony at least up to a few days after. We will give you more time than that.

Mr. Armacost. It is an important question and I would appreciate it.

Mr. Kildee. Talk among yourselves and tell us how we can really make that negotiated rule-making more effective.

You are the ones who are delivering the educational services out there. The Department of Education really should be working with you and assisting you and not really be the master of that. You are on the front line delivering, and you represent a variety of different types of institutions here this morning. We have done a good job in choosing the panel.

I think we have to look at the total spectrum of delivery of educational services. And if, among yourselves or separately, you can give us some ideas on how we can make that negotiated rule-making work better, that would be very helpful to this committee. Because we pass a law, and very often, I read the regulations and I wonder what were the seminal roots of the regulations in the law; I really can't find them.

They are not lawmakers over there in the Department of Education. They are the ones who take the laws that we pass and try to make the laws easier for you to understand, easier to apply, but not really to go beyond what we legislate and sometimes ignore a bill or legislation.

So if you can get us any assistance on the rule-making, that would be helpful to us.

Mr. Armacost. The initial comment I would make, it seems to me there is an absolutely incredible diversity in American higher education, and one-size-fits-all simply doesn't work; and if we are going to make any progress in this direction, it seems to me we do need to differentiate between different kinds of institutions and then focus the rule-making more specifically on different types of institutions. I think that would help a good deal.

Ms. Stewart. I have two very brief thoughts on that.

First of all, that is, it would be beneficial in the negotiated rule-making process to identify the negotiations up front. For example, does consensus mean unanimity or does consensus mean agreement among the majority of the individuals or the associations present?

Secondly, some of the problems that have stemmed from negotiated rule-making include a very lengthy process. The situation gets resolved and almost immediately a new regulation is promulgated changing what the consensus was in negotiated rule-making.

Mr. Kildee. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think we have assembled a good panel here this morning, and it has been very helpful to me, and I am sure it would be helpful to the rest of the committee. Most of our committee is on the floor right now, debating another bill, but the Chairman and I are here, and we certainly will carry this back to the rest of them.

Thank you very much.

Chairman McKeon. This doesn't just happen with the Department of Education. My other committee is National Security, and we passed a law last Congress telling one of the branches of the armed services something that they should do, and they didn't do it; and I watched the Chairman of our Procurement Committee grill them in a hearing after they had basically said, we are not going to do what you told us to do; and they are still proceeding that way. So it happens everywhere.

Mr. Kildee. Mr. Chairman one time, I got in the elevator and one Member got on, a rather arrogant Member, who will remain nameless, and he got off. And first of all, the elevator operator said, he voted wrong. And then elevator operator said, I have seen Members come and go, and I still keep this job.

But I think there is an elevator operator idea over there in the Department sometimes. They have seen Members come and go and they still have their job, but I think we have to try to get control somehow.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. I think we realize there is a problem. We know we need to address it, and we will work at it; and as Mr. Kildee said, you are on the firing line and you have to deal with these down at the end of the road.

It is not just federal; we have a lot of state requirements also. I come from California. California probably has more requirements on the state level than we do on a federal level, and we are encouraging states to review their regulations and see if we can't cut them down.

I just think as we become a more educated society, we don't need to be told everything to do in our daily work, and the concern about writing an NPRM and not having anybody read it, I think that is a very real concern; and maybe one thing we can do in reviewing regulations, if something is not read and answered within a month, then we eliminate that regulation, and then we can move it down to 3 weeks and then 2 weeks.

Thank you very much. As Mr. Kildee said, if you have more to respond to his question or any others on things you think we should be looking at. If you will get that to us and as we go through this process, if you will continue to be involved, we would appreciate it.

Thank you very much, and we will now adjourn this hearing.

[Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]