SALT LAKE CITY — A state senator says she still has questions about what colleges and universities are doing to enhance campus safety since the murder of University of Utah track athlete Lauren McCluskey.
And Sen. Jani Iwamoto, D-Salt Lake City, said she’s working on a bill for the upcoming legislative session to address some of those issues, specifically integrating records management and dispatch systems between university police and local police departments.
“We need seamless borders,” she said after an Education Interim Committee meeting Wednesday.
The Utah State Board of Regents presented a report on campus safety plans to lawmakers in accordance with a bill Iwamoto sponsored earlier this year. The law requires schools to report annually on changes made in the past year and what they anticipate doing in the coming year. The board governs Utah’s eight public universities and colleges.
The board intends to devote its January meeting to student safety.
“I don’t want to pretend as we come up here that all of these things we’re doing is taking care of the entire issue. There are a lot of things that still need to be addressed related to campus safety and our institutions are very well aware of them,” said Spencer Jenkins, the board’s chief of staff.
McCluskey was shot to death by 37-year-old Melvin Rowland, whom she briefly dated. Rowland, a convicted sex offender, had lied to McCluskey about his name, age and background. Her murder followed extortion attempts by Rowland. McCluskey had made several reports to U. police in the days leading up to her death.
Iwamoto said police all need to be on the same record management system so they can see what’s going on and off campus. She said she wants of find out how local police and university police are communicating with each other as part of drafting her legislation.
“It’s like you’re on different islands because you can’t see the information that goes back and forth,” she said.
Jenkins said there is already a “fair amount” of communication between police agencies.
Utah State University in the past six months installed a new dispatch system and its records management protocol has changed “dramatically” to work with local agencies, he said. The U. and Dixie State University have also made strides in that area, but there’s still work to be done, he said.
“With law enforcement agencies, they want to be very clear on where their responsibilities start and end. Sometimes that creates a siloing effect when you’ve got a student who’s a quarter mile off campus but it’s involving the institution as well as the local agency. That’s hopefully one thing in the next year we can get a little more clarity on,” Jenkins said.
Jeff Herring, U. chief human resources officer, told the committee that the university has learned in the past year that the work is never done.
“It’s top of mind every day,” he said.
Herring said the U. has completed or is working on 68 of 69 recommendations that came out of an independent review of the McCluskey case.
The outstanding item is the relocation of the public safety building. Administrators are looking to move the building from west of the Huntsman Center to a more central and accessible location on campus.
The U. also is hiring a senior-level chief safety officer, clustering evening classes in quadrants and serving those areas with security patrols, courtesy escorts and transportation options that include an on-campus, on-demand ride service.
McCluskey’s parents filed a $56 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the university earlier this year, alleging it had taken no responsibility for the death of their daughter.
