PIKE CHAPTER AT UF REINSTATED FOLLOWING SUCCESSFUL APPEAL

Adam Eckstein

The Higher Education Opportunity Act, signed into law August 14, 2008, created new fire safety reporting rules that require schools to report annually to the Secretary of the Department of Education and to the campus community.  This language in H.R. 4137 sparked a conversation on campus fire safety reporting requirements and the law’s effects on fraternity and sorority housing.

The new fire safety reporting requirements will apply to any school participating in any program under the Higher Education Act of 1965, which this new law amends.  While the Department of Education (DOE) is engaged in rulemaking to regulate the fire safety reporting requirements, it is expected that only those fraternities and sororities whose housing the school owns, maintains, inspects, manages, or staffs will be subject to the fire safety reporting requirement.  However, some have expressed concern that schools will stretch the letter of the law and will seek to incorporate fire safety reporting requirements in their agreements with, or recognition of, fraternities’ and sororities’ housing.  For that reason, knowing what the law requires in regards to reporting and fire safety is important.

Specifically, H.R. 4137 requires that each institution annually report to the Secretary of the DOE on statistics, the on-campus student housing fire safety system, the number of mandatory supervised fire drills, policies on potential fire hazards, and plans for future improvements in fire safety, if determined necessary.  The statistics should describe (i) the number and cause of each fire, (ii) the number of injuries related to a fire that resulted in treatment at a medical facility, (iii) the number of deaths related to a fire, and (iv) the value of property damage caused by a fire.  The Secretary of the DOE will make the reported statistics available to the public.

Regulations that will be promulgated by the DOE should clarify the threshold level of a fire that must be reported, e.g., whether burnt popcorn can go unreported while structural damage must be reported.  Regulations also will likely specify how institutions can determine the value of property damage caused by a fire.

In addition to annual reporting to the Secretary, H.R. 4137 also requires schools to make annual reports to the campus community.  The law ensures accurate reporting both to the Secretary and the campus by requiring institutions to “make, keep, and maintain a log, recording all fires in on-campus student housing facilities, including the nature, date, time, and general location of each fire.”

Under the law, the Secretary of the DOE will create and disseminate, in consultation with “representatives of associations of institutions of higher education[ ] and other organizations that represent and house a significant number of students,” exemplary policies and protocols gauged to reduce the number of fires on campuses.  While the bill contains no language requiring campuses to adopt the Secretary’s policies—in the law’s “Rules of Construction,” Congress actually said that the fire safety subsection may not authorize the Secretary “to require particular policies, procedures, programs, or practices by institutions of higher education with respect to fire safety”—school’s reports to the Secretary must include plans for future improvements in fire safety, if necessary. So schools should at least consider those policies disseminated by the Secretary.

While all of H.R. 4137’s regulations are directed at schools, its effects will trickle down to each school’s institutions, particularly those like fraternities and sororities that offer campus housing.  As each school adjusts its fire safety reporting requirements to account for the new federal mandates, each school will lean on its organizations for more stringent reporting.  To best achieve the ultimate goal of improved fire safety, fraternities and sororities should be able to distinguish between what is legally required of them and what the school merely wishes them to do.