OK, I’ll weigh in on this one.

First up, I’ve followed the links back to the original source (or at least, the original news coverage of the university’s board of regents/special counsel/task force report that covers the case):

newsok.com

As far as I can tell, the report is fairly clear that the university officials in question chose their course of action due to a misinterpretation of FERPA regulations (either they genuinely thought they were not allowed to contact the police, or there was sufficient doubt in their minds that they decided not to). The key segment on this is:

Although OSU officials misinterpreted the act, James Sears Bryant, the Board of Regents’ independent counsel, said he thought they did so in good faith. Student privacy is a difficult area of law, he said, and applying the facts of any case to it can present challenges.

Campus crime reporting isn’t really my thing, but the intersection between it and student privacy is obviously at least somewhat tricky. Obviously, spelling out the ways in which information can be shared between academic units and campus police (or indeed other law enforcement units) is a good thing to do, and is hopefully something that more institutions are doing now.

The final question of whether there needs to be an actual (legal?) obligation to report such accusations to the police is left to the reader. As in - if you’re teaching a class and a female student comes in with a black eye, and it turns out she had a fight with her boyfriend, should you be required to go to the police on her behalf?