Virginia Tech officials have been criticised for their slow respond to the campus's 2007 shootings.
Virginia Tech will have to pay the maximum $55,000 fine for violating federal law by waiting too long to notify students during the 2007 shooting rampage, the U.S. Department of Education announced March 29.
Department officials said in a letter to the school that the sanction should have been greater for the school’s slow response to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The $55,000 fine was the most the department could levy for Tech’s two violations of the federal Clery Act, which requires timely reporting of crimes on campus.
More on the Virginia Tech shooting…
Feds: Va. Tech broke law in ’07 shooting
“While Virginia Tech’s violations warrant a fine far in excess of what is currently permissible under the statute, the Department’s fine authority is limited,” wrote Mary Gust, director of a department panel that dictated what punishment the school would receive for the violation.
The university could have lost some of its $98 million in federal student aid. The department has never stripped a school of federal funding for such a violation.
