CONWAY, S.C. (WPDE) The Penn State scandal may have happened hundreds of miles away, but it's affecting higher education in our area.
In the wake of the charges, Coastal Carolina University reviewed its policies, and now they take more steps to ensure the safety of their campus.
"There's nothing more important to Coastal than campus safety. You can't educate a student and they can't attend here if they don't feel safe. That's a fundamental thing," explains Tim Meacham, Counsel for CCU. "I think the important thing to realize with the Penn State situation is you want to focus on prevention as much as you can, but I think the important thing is when you have a circumstance like that the response is key."
Meacham says he's bound by ethical obligation to report illegal activity and has no problem doing so.
"When the incident happened at Penn State, obviously a natural reaction is to review your policies. We looked at some of the things that we do with camps. (We) required camps that they don't have registered sex offenders. We also require contractors to include a statement that they will comply with Title IX or risk the cancellation of their project without refund," he adds.
Title IX is a 40-year-old amendment under the Department of Education and includes preventing sex discrimination as well as sexual violence. CCU has now also expanded their background checks.
"In our HR policies, we went forward and started doing background checks on volunteers as well as student workers, because we have a significant number of student workers here at the institution. We'd already done checks on employees full-time and part-time so we expanded that," says Meacham.
Last year, the Department of Education began requiring a Title IX officer be on the campus of public institutions. Meacham goes on to say the right statutes are in place, it's just a matter of schools following through.
If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual abuse the Rape Crisis Center serves Horry and Georgetown counties. Pee Dee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Assault serves Florence, Darlington, Marion, Chesterfield, Marlboro, Dillon, and Williamsburg counties.
