Maja Myszkowski has served as the Clery Act Compliance Coordinator in the Office of Audit, Risk and Compliance for nine months. Knowing she wanted to work in a college environment, Myszkowski earned her master’s in counselor education from Clemson University and worked at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa before coming to MSU. Here, she worked at Residence Education and Housing Services, where she eventually learned about and became interested in the Clery Act and Clery compliance from being a part of the Clery Compliance Steering Committee. So when she saw the opening for her current role — MSU’s first full-time Clery compliance position — she was excited for the opportunity. But what exactly is the Clery Act and why is it so important? In this Q and A, Myszkowski explains this along with the ins and outs of her position.
What is Clery Act compliance?
Myszkowski: The full name of the act is the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, and it's a federal law that's focused on transparency. It's a consumer protection law that requires colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs to do a number of things around safety on campus. It requires campuses to collect and disclose crime statistics, to have specific policies and procedures on their campuses and to be transparent towards consumers — which includes current as well as prospective students and employees. It wants us to be transparent so that people can make informed decisions as to whether or not they want to choose MSU.
What kinds of things do you do daily as a Clery Act Compliance Coordinator?
In my position, I oversee the institution-wide undertaking of compliance around Clery — creating processes and procedures around those expectations that I mentioned. It entails counting, collecting crime statistics and ensuring that we have specific policies regarding safety and security. And there is a required annual Security and Fire Safety Report a university must publish that provides the statistics and the policies — so a big part of my role is preparing that document and publishing the documents to the community.
Another big part of my role is training people to know what to report, where to report it and to know the policies. Lastly, another huge part of my role, which is somewhat unique and more time-specific is that in September 2019, MSU entered into a settlement agreement with the Department of Education’s Clery Act Compliance Division. Therefore, a big part of my role is to continue progressing our compliance under that settlement agreement and making sure we're accomplishing the requirements we agreed to.
What would you say are important qualities to have in this role?
You have to be both detail-oriented and able to see how details fit into the big picture because the Clery Act has very specific definitions for crimes — like what the crime is, where it occurred and the timeframe it occurred in — and we want to make sure that we're compliant in following everything that's outlined under the federal act. So, you need to be detail-oriented to make sure that what is described as an incident fits in all those definitions.
Then, you have to also be able to translate how one incident could affect the greater community and the MSU community as a whole. Under the Clery Act, one of the requirements is to issue timely warnings and emergency notifications, so making sure we're following the appropriate requirements from the federal act of what we send out and how we send that out.
What's something you've learned while being in this new role?
Having been at MSU for five and a half years before taking on this role, this role helped me see more of that bigger picture of how things at this institution work together. It's been a unique experience seeing a process that is a university-wide initiative take form, and it's been a unique opportunity to be able to work with so many partners across the university and seeing a dedication from everyone on campus to make this work.
Would you say that people in general should know more about the Clery Act? Is it something that needs more awareness?
Yeah, I think that's a big piece of it. I think it would be beneficial for more people on campus to understand larger aspects of the Clery Act because as I mentioned, there are a lot of details based on the Act that could be misunderstood or misrepresented. The biggest part of the Act is transparency, and so I would 100% love for people to be more informed about what this act is, why it's in place and then how the law is carried out across campus
As I mentioned, for example, the alerts that are pushed out to the community under the Clery Act are to be pushed out at very specific times. It would be great if people understood what those times were, why the alerts are being pushed out and what information we are required to include in them. Similarly, in the annual Security and Fire Safety Report, we report the statistics of crimes from past years. And it would be great if it was better understood that we have to follow specific definitions of crimes, the timeline of when those crimes need to have occurred to be included and the locations because I think it would help people to better interpret those statistics and to be more informed.
What’s your favorite part about this role?
Overall, I think the reason why I wanted to even apply for this role or be considered for it, is the spirit of the act. I do fully believe in and support the principle of being transparent, providing people the information that they need to make informed decisions to feel safe on campus. I value that transparency and wanted to be a part of that.
And I think what makes me continue to like the role is the collaboration. There's so many colleagues working together to implement all the requirements and working together to continuously improve our processes around Clery compliance to make sure that we're meeting the spirit of that.
How has the pandemic changed what you do?
Much of the work is administrative, and so I've been able to continue working at a distance. The partnership and working with a variety of people across campus to implement all that's required but with the pandemic it has just shifted in format. We used to have big Clery compliance committee meetings, and we now do that virtually. We're still moving forward and making sure we're doing everything we can.
For more information about the Clery Act, visit police.msu.edu or email Myszkowski at myszkow2@msu.edu.