As 2026 kicks off, the Lauren McCluskey Foundation is thrilled to share an update on Phase Two of the Campus Safety Score project. In 2025, we discussed the development of the tool and its design goal of offering a comprehensive, rubric-based assessment of campus safety practices across higher education institutions. Inspired by Lauren’s legacy and our ongoing commitment to preventing tragedies like the one that took her life, the Campus Safety Score aims to go beyond traditional metrics by taking a holistic approach that measures policies, procedures, training, safety culture, crime data, and community safety perceptions.
As of this update, 36 in-depth interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs) from the fields of threat management, violence prevention, criminal justice, counseling, university administration, student affairs and housing, and insurance have been completed. These conversations have yielded rich insights that will inform refinements to the tool. The feedback reinforces the Campus Safety Score’s potential as a proactive resource for institutions, prospective students, families, and stakeholders — while highlighting areas for improvement to ensure fairness, accuracy, and real-world impact.
Strengthening the Foundation: What Experts Appreciated
SMEs overwhelmingly viewed the Campus Safety Score as a much-needed advancement over existing safety assessments. Many praised its holistic approach, ethical focus on best practices, and emphasis on prevention rather than reaction. Key strengths included:
Proactive and Comprehensive Design
Experts noted the tool’s inclusion of safety culture and perceptions—elements often missing from crime-data-heavy systems—as innovative and essential for capturing the full picture of campus environments.
Gap Identification and Advocacy Potential
A recurring theme was the Campus Safety Score’s ability to highlight deficiencies and provide actionable data, helping campus leaders advocate for resources like enhanced training, staffing, and victim support services.
Transparency and Accountability
The rubric-based structure was seen as promoting data-driven decisions and consistency, with potential to drive institutional improvements and perhaps even influence insurance risk assessments.
As a gap analysis tool, experts noted that it could be used to convince leadership of the need for resources and funding and to promote data-driven decision-making specific to the institution’s safety needs. In discussing the challenges associated with institutional leadership and the lack of knowledge regarding threat assessment and management in higher education, one expert noted that the Campus Safety Score could serve as a “convincing piece” for leadership to prioritize safety investments that might otherwise stall.
Refining for Equity and Enhanced Accuracy: Expert Recommendations
While enthusiastic about the concept, SMEs offered constructive recommendations to make the Campus Safety Score more robust and equitable. Common themes included:
Addressing Institutional Variability
Concerns arose that the score might not clearly reflect the safety of smaller, rural, or less-resourced campuses. Experts urged flexible weighting and contextualization by institution size, type, and location.
Enhancing Metrics and Surveys
Suggestions included adding measurable elements such as near misses, physical security audits, and trauma-informed practices, and streamlining surveys to boost participation and improve data actionability.
Balancing Perceptions and Objectivity
The high weighting of community perceptions was flagged as a potential to introduce bias in the score. The experts recommended revisiting this and advocated increased weighting for safety culture, along with providing clarifying definitions to prevent misinterpretation.
Avoiding Redundancies and Misrepresentation
Overlaps with existing reporting mandates (e.g., Clery/Violence Against Women Act) should be streamlined to help reduce report fatigue. The experts also offered further guidance to help minimize the misuse of the tool.
Data collection/verification, stakeholder buy-in, and survey response rates were all flagged as key challenges that the project would need to overcome. The inclusion of student perceptions was praised, though the feedback suggested expanding this to include faculty and staff perceptions. Caution was also advised in weighting this too greatly, given the potential for low rates of return on surveys and the capacity to introduce bias into the score.
Promoting Safer Communities
The SMEs largely agree that the Campus Safety Score prototype benefits “everyone.” “Whole campus community” was cited the most frequently as a key beneficiary of the development of a tool to assess campus safety, with students, parents, and law enforcement/public safety personnel as the following most frequently cited beneficiaries. In some cases, one expert noted, the university is the community, so what benefits the institution benefits the entire town.
The value of the prototype lies in its capacity to serve as a diagnostic tool that highlights deficiencies in areas such as behavior intervention and threat assessment teams, as well as training and standard operating procedures. For instance, SMEs noted that it could reveal under-resourced elements, such as limited awareness and capacity among threat assessment teams. It enables institutions to prioritize investments, such as funding for training, personnel, or other resources, and helps inform deployments, such as strategic law enforcement and security personnel placement. It further fosters cross-community/campus collaboration and, with its emphasis on safety culture, promotes a culture of community vigilance and responsiveness.
Looking Ahead at Phase Three and Beyond
With 36 interviews complete and analysis underway, we are on track to revise the Campus Safety Score—incorporating clearer rubrics, operational definitions, and refined metrics. Revised drafts will be shared with our SMEs for further review.
The Lauren McCluskey Foundation is profoundly grateful to the dedicated experts who contributed their time and wisdom. Their input has strengthened the Campus Safety Score, positioning it as a transparent, actionable tool to foster safer campuses nationwide. By honoring Lauren’s legacy through this work, we move closer to environments where the campus and its surrounding communities feel truly supported and secure. Thank you for your continued support — as we refine and pilot the Campus Safety Score, together we can drive meaningful change in higher education safety.
