Campus Safety is a Leadership Responsibility

By Laura Egan

The 2026 virtual summit takes place on September 10, beginning at 11 AM ET. This free event brings together higher education and campus safety professionals to explore practical strategies and real-world approaches to strengthening campus safety.

Campus safety is more than a compliance obligation; it’s an institutional responsibility that can affect student well-being, institutional reputation, financial stability, and the ability to fulfill its mission.

The Clery Act is often viewed as the role of a designated Clery professional or team, but effective compliance requires coordination across campus. Public safety, student affairs, housing, Title IX, communications, legal counsel, and other departments all play important roles. Senior leaders need enough understanding of these responsibilities to ask the right questions, ensure adequate resources are available, and recognize when a safety concern may present broader institutional risk.

What should leaders be asking?

Senior institution leaders don’t need to become Clery Act experts. They should, however, understand how their institution approaches safety and whether the structures and resources necessary to do that work effectively are in place.

Questions worth asking include:

Who is responsible for Clery Act compliance, and do they have sufficient authority, resources, and institutional support?
How does the institution coordinate Clery responsibilities across departments?
How are safety concerns identified, reported, assessed, and communicated to leadership?
Does the institution regularly evaluate whether emergency plans work in practice—not just whether they exist on paper?
Are prevention and response efforts reaching the entire campus community, including often marginalized and underrepresented groups?
How does the institution identify and address gaps in policies, training, reporting, and response?

These questions shift the conversation from “Are we compliant?” to “Are we prepared to keep our campus community safe?”

Investing in Impact

These questions are especially important as colleges and universities navigate increasingly constrained budgets. Meaningful progress does not necessarily require unlimited resources, but it does require institutions to be strategic about where and how they invest.

This year’s theme for Clery Center’s National Campus Safety Awareness Month (NCSAM) virtual summit, Investing in Impact, focuses on this challenge: How institutions can advance meaningful safety initiatives when resources are limited and make campus safety a core institutional value.

The Summit is designed for campus safety practitioners, but its lessons are also relevant to leaders responsible for institutional strategy, risk, resources, and accountability. Recordings will be shared with all registrants after the event.

Campus safety is an institutional responsibility. For senior campus leaders, understanding how the Clery Act is implemented on their campus and asking thoughtful questions about safety, preparedness, prevention, and compliance is an important place to start.