Universities, Students Are Learning the Facts of Life in a Dangerous World

A little tipsy from an off-campus party, freshman Kristin Smart set off on foot for her Cal Poly dorm room at 2 a.m. on a Saturday accompanied by a young man.

That was Memorial Day weekend two years ago.

She has not been seen since.

It took police on the San Luis Obispo campus three days to open a formal investigation, partly from confusion during the long holiday weekend over whether Smart was really missing.

Though the campus police found troubling “discrepancies” in the young man’s story about what happened that night, they said they never came up with sufficient legal cause to search his dorm room. And by the time they turned the case over to sheriff’s homicide detectives, the academic year was over. The suspect had cleared out his dorm room, gone from the campus for good.

“The campus police don’t routinely handle homicides and were resistant to handing it over to the sheriffs until a month afterward,” complains Stan Smart, the father of the 19-year-old student from Stockton. “By that time, the trail was cold.”

Kristin Smart’s 1996 disappearance now is the inspiration behind a new state law that will force campus authorities to spell out exactly when they will call in outside police to help investigate violent crimes.

The measure, signed by Gov. Pete Wilson last month, was championed by Stan Smart and his wife, who channeled their frustration and rage into lobbying for legislation to change the system.

A Cal Poly attorney, Carlos Cordova, said the campus community’s heart goes out to the Smarts over their “tragedy.”

But he is reluctant to say more because the university is involved in a lawsuit from the couple. He fiercely defends campus police officers as “experienced and capable,” however, saying they worked closely with sheriff’s investigators, the FBI and other agencies once it was clear the young woman was missing.

Nonetheless, Cal Poly joined other public campuses in supporting the Kristin Smart Campus Safety Act.

The new law affirms that campus police at all of California’s public colleges have primary authority for investigating crime on their grounds but requires that they work out formal, written agreements with neighboring police departments.

“We all think that our children are safe on campus,” says Denise Smart, the still-furious mother of the vanished Kristin. “The new law hopefully will prevent this from happening in the future.”

The Smarts are far from the first couple to challenge the way campuses deal with crime.

Clusters of parents--many with horror stories of their own--have formed lobbying groups around the nation: Safe Campuses Now, National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, Parents Against Corruption & Coverup, Security on Campus Inc. The list goes on.

These groups lobby for better crime prevention, quicker response from campus police and a more straightforward accounting of criminal activity.

Mostly, they complain, they run up against college officials’ aversion to any mention of crime, fearing it will shatter the image of their campuses as havens for teenagers just learning how to navigate life on their own.

It took an act of Congress in 1990 to require campuses to report property and violent crimes in a systematic way. Still, federal officials say many continue to underreport certain crimes--such as date rape--for fear of harming their reputations or earning a nasty reference in one of those how-to-pick-a-college guidebooks.

One problem: Many institutions bring suspected wrongdoers before campus judiciary proceedings rather than arrest them.

These proceedings are behind closed doors and any punishment ends up concealed in the student’s academic record, which is protected by federal privacy law.

Congress is now wrestling with ways to close loopholes in the Campus Security Act of 1990, including opening the disciplinary records of students who commit violent acts.