A bill aimed at making colleges and universities across the state respond faster to reports of missing students in the wake of University of Colorado Boulder student Megan Trussell’s death last year will get a full vote in the Colorado House of Representatives after a subcommittee overwhelmingly supported it.
State Sen. Janice Marchman says if made law, Senate Bill 120 could save lives and improve accountability. When the University of Colorado Boulder first responded to a report that Trussell was missing, the school didn’t do the best it could, Marchman said, and the guidelines in SB-120 could prevent that.
The bill was unanimously passed by the State Senate on March 16. After a brief discussion of the bill in the House’s State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs subcommittee on Thursday, it voted 9-1 to send the bill to the full House chamber, where Marchman is confident it will pass.
“What I heard (from students) was that when kids go missing, they expect, and their families expect, that they will be looked for,” the Loveland Democrat said in an interview with the Daily Camera in her office in the state Capitol. “Everyone was incredibly shocked to find out that colleges wait for 24 hours.”…