By the words of the Bill of Rights, each of us is entitled to a fair trial before an impartial jury. As members of the public, we are entitled to know about the happenings in our hometown and around the world.

When charges are filed or a trial begins, the public has a right to know this information and attend the trial, if they so wish. We have a right to know about accused murders, people who have received speeding tickets and how many rapes are reported.

But on campuses around the nation, the story is different.

Federal law requires campus crimes to be reported for crime statistics, but only if the crime is investigated by campus police and results in arrest. Violations that make their way through often-closed student judicial systems aren’t required to be part of the statistics.

At many universities around the country, a series of proceedings, investigations and crimes aren’t reported to the public. At ISU, everything is open except for the student judicial system.

A US House bill is addressing exactly that issue. It would increase the accuracy of campus crime statistics by requiring all incidence of crimes, regardless of an arrest, to be included. It would also require non-police officials — such as the campus court system — to report. Student hearings would be open to the public.

Unfortunately, the bill is currently stalling within Congress. Unless it makes it back into the minds of our representatives, it will die at the end of the 1998 session.

A political science professor said the bill is “obviously not an imperative issue” for the committee considering it.

It should be.

Not only because we believe in the Constitution as the supreme doctrine, but because it is simply just for people to know what is happening, campus courts around the country, particularly at ISU, should open up from a history of isolation.