Students may soon access information on convicted sex offenders that work or study on campus from University Police.

A bill passed Monday by the California State Assembly updated Megan’s Law to include campus police making information on sex offenders in the campus community available to students.

The bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Gray Davis this week.

Megan’s Law, a database of more than 80,000 names of sex offenders has been extended until 2007 by the legislature. The law was set to expire on Jan. 1, 2004.

The legislature reconvened Monday to act on Assembly Bill 1313 and it was passed by a majority.

The bill, written by Assemblymember Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, includes sex offenders’ obligations to provide information to campus police such as a photographs, fingerprints, addresses and driver’s licenses so they can be made accessible to the public.

The bill was passed by a majority vote.

Student Felix Wusstig said he thinks people would feel safer on campus if they knew sex offenders’ identities.

“You should be free to know who is out there because the person might do it again,” Wusstig said.

AB 1313 allows campus police to hold sex offender information, which would make the state eligible for more than $5 million in federal funds. The information on sex offenders on campus was not open to the public prior to the enactment of AB 1313.

Business major Amy McVicar said it is a good thing to be aware of sex offenders, but she pities people who need that information to feel safe.”I don’t think its fair to be judged on something you did a long time ago,” McVicar said.”These people have spent time in jail and everyone deserves a second chance.”

The details of how information will be provided have not been given to campus police yet.

Investigator John Hamrick said that Ken Barnett, director of Department of Public Safety, is awaiting contact from the chancellor’s legal staff regarding the implementation of AB 1313.

The bill requires a member of the campus community to sign a statement before police would release offender information and would require the statement to be held in a file for at least five years.

The bill provides that the Department of Justice may develop a training program for disclosuring the information by University Police.

Jessica Heskin of the Women’s Resource Center and the Rape Prevention Program thinks that the information should only be used by law enforcers. “It would cause chaos if students could find out if there is a convicted sex offender in their class,” Heskin said. “It is a different environment here on campus than off campus.”

Sacramento has 3,373 convicted sex offenders registered with local police.

Megan’s Law was enacted in 1996 after Megan Nicole Kanka, a 7-year-old girl from New Jersey, was murdered by a neighbor who was a convicted child molester.

The law created a database of names and locations organized by ZIP code and of serious and high-risk sex offenders.

Full text of AB 1313 is available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov.htm