Yale University violated several regulations in the Clery Act by failing to correctly report statistics for crimes including sexual assault, the Yale Daily News reported. The U.S. Department of Education discovered the under-reporting after a seven-year investigation into the Yale Police Department. The university failed to comply with crime log requirements and improperly defined campus boundaries, while Yale Medical School and Yale-New Haven Hospital failed to report accurate crime statistics and omitted policy statements from security reports, according to the News. Although the Clery Act requires campus-wide reporting of incidents that may present an ongoing threat, Yale administrators only notified members of certain residential colleges, the report said. Yale may face punishments ranging from fines to a reduction in federal funding for student financial aid, including Title IV grants, the News reported.
The U.S. Department of Education urged college and university presidents to ensure their institutions follow federal discrimination laws when using "emerging technology," Inside Higher Ed reported. The statement, released Thursday, expanded on a 2010 letter and clarified that any online content or technology must be accessible to all individuals, even if no disabled students are currently enrolled at the institution in question. Instructors might not consider whether rapidly evolving digital content offered by software companies, online learning platforms and email clients like Blackboard, Pearson, Google and Microsoft are accessible to users with vision impairments and other disabilities, Kelly Hermann, chair of the Online Education Special Interest Group at the Association of Higher Education and Disability, said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.
The Academic Senate's Representative Assembly at the University of California, San Diego voted on Tuesday to call for administrative action in response to a report on alleged violations of academic freedom at the university, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The report addressed a manuscript submitted by sociology professor Richard Biernacki to Duke University Press in June 2009, which criticized "methodological problems in the field" of sociology, including the work of one of Biernacki's colleagues at UCSD. In response to the report, UCSD Dean of the Division of Social Sciences Jeff Elman wrote to Biernacki that publishing the manuscript or discussing it at professional meetings could result in "written censure, reduction in salary, demotion, suspension or dismissal," The Union-Tribune reported. Elman explained in his letter that Biernacki's manuscript could harm his colleague's reputation and could be considered harassment, according to The Union-Tribune.
