New rules that take affect today at Duke aim to clarify and strengthen the University's protections for children. Officials say discussions were underway before the child abuse scandal at Penn State brought more attention to the issue. Kyle Cavanaugh is the Vice President for Administration at Duke. He says the new policy requires every member of the university community to report any suspected abuse of minors to campus police immediately.
Kyle Cavanaugh says, "The things that have occurred across the country boil down to individuals. We have been incredibly fortunate that we've had nothing in our experience that comes close to any of the challenges that other institutions have experienced and so our hope is that we would never have that and this is simply a additional step that would help mitigate that."
Cavanaugh says there are an estimated 8-to-9-thousand minors coming to the campus over the course of the year for academic programs, sports camps and tours.