- Amatra Keeps Students Safe and Helps Universities Comply With the Clery Act 11/16/12

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we turn our focus to families — Amatra is thankful for the opportunity to provide technology that keeps families safe and informed during emergency situations through mass notification.

Commencement 2012

Students graduating from Anderson University, one of Amatra's clients

And for families with students in college, while a great education and well-rounded, happy experience are important, the bottom line is their children’s safety. And it’s Amatra’s highest priority in our educational implementations.

Amatra SmartSource™ technology helps colleges and universities stay in compliance with a federal mandate known as the Clery Act, which requires higher-education institutions to immediately report certain incidents to students and their parents.

The law, originally called the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act, was passed in 1990 and named in honor of Jeanne Clery, a woman who was a freshman at Lehigh University in 1986 when she was raped and murdered in her residence hall, which went unreported on campus.

It requires that all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs disclose comprehensive information about crime on their campuses and in the areas surrounding it. The U.S. Department of Education can levy civil penalties of tens of thousands of dollars for failure to comply to the terms of the act, and schools can also be suspended from participation in federal student financial aid programs.

These disclosures include:

  • Annual security reports that are distributed to prospective students and employees
  • Publicly accessible crime logs
  • Crime statistics for the past three years
  • Timely warnings of incidents that pose a threat to an institution’s students or employees

Those timely warnings are where Amatra comes in.

We prepare for the worst, of course, but the best possible scenario is that these emergency mass communications technology never need to be implemented in the first place. But in the event of an even more serious occurrence, colleges and universities using Amatra SmartSource™ will be ready for anything.

There are plenty of other reasons educational institutions might choose Amatra, but they all boil down to students’ safety and their families’ peace of mind.

Thank you for the opportunity to help you keep your campuses secure and constantly in communication! For more information on bringing Amatra to your campus, send an e-mail to info@amatra.com.