PHILADELPHIA _ Pennsylvania State University said Friday that it will accept and pay the record $2.4 million in fines the U.S. Department of Education levied this month for hiding or failing to properly classify and report campus crime.
The fines covered violations that occurred between 1998 _ when the first complaint surfaced that Jerry Sandusky had abused young boys _ through 2011, when the former assistant football coach was indicted and former university officials were accused of conspiring to cover up his abuse. But many of the violations had nothing to do with Sandusky, sex crimes or the athletic program.
The university had until Friday to accept the department's sanction or challenge it. Despite disagreeing with some findings, the university said it will not contest them.
"We have accepted the fines and will continue to focus on our ongoing Clery compliance," the university said in a statement. "It is Penn State's goal to not only meet the standards articulated by the Department of Education, as we believe we currently do, but to set a new standard for Clery compliance in higher education."
The university has emphasized its efforts to overhaul campus safety and governance regulations since Sandusky was charged, including appointing an administrator to oversee compliance and training thousands of employees on the law.
In its 239-page report, the department cited 11 areas of violations of the Clery Act, the federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose crimes reported on or near their campuses and warn students about potential threats.
For instance, regulators found that the university failed to report 40 crimes to the federal Education Department in 2011, the bulk of them drug-abuse and liquor-law violations. It also was faulted for failing to produce adequate security and fire safety reports, issue timely warnings in other cases, establish an adequate system for collecting crime statistics, and maintain an accurate and complete daily crime log.
The largest portion of the fine _ about $2.1 million _ was for Penn State's failure to properly classify reported incidents and disclose crime statistics from 2008 to 2011.
Only $27,500 of the fine was directly related to the handling of the Sandusky serial sex-abuse case, unquestionably the highest-profile crime on campus. In its report, education officials cited the claim that senior Penn State administrators knew Sandusky was a suspected sexual predator _ and never warned the community.
"In short, a man who was about to be charged with violent crimes against defenseless minors was free to roam the Penn State campus, as he pleased," an administrator wrote in a letter to Penn State President Eric Barron.
(Three former university administrators, including ex-president Graham Spanier, are awaiting trial on accusations they covered up or ignored the crimes. Each has pleaded not guilty.)
The previous record fine under Clery was $357,500 imposed on Eastern Michigan University. Under a settlement, the university paid $350,000.
The Clery Act became law in 1990, named after Jeanne Clery, who was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University in 1986.
