Campus Safety

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a training session about campus safety conducted by the Missouri Center for Education Safety.   The session was primarily attended by law enforcement officers, but there were a few university administrators present.  Maybe the large number of badges and firearms should have given me a clue that I was going to learn more than I had expected.

Like many of you, I have read and reread the recommendations coming out of the Virginia Tech Commission and have seen many of our colleagues vilified on national TV for their perceived role in that day, as well as more recently the tragedies in Tucson.  Basically, I thought I had a good grasp and believed “I would have done something different.”

The session yesterday was presented by Kevin Foust, Supervisory Senior Resident Agent, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (I want to share that I was incredibly impressed with him and the emotion that he showed as he was talking about the victims – as good of a professional as he clearly is, he maintained a human side).  Mr. Foust ran us through the timeline of all the university and police contacts with Mr. Cho and challenged us to react only to that information and not what we know ultimately happened.  At each decision point, I could see that they operated exactly as I would have.  Students who were stalked by him just wanted him to leave them alone (he did) and wouldn’t press charges – how often do we see that on our campuses?   He was ordered by the court to attend counseling, but he never showed to the VT Counseling center (do we have processes in place to force students to attend counseling sessions?  No, we can’t even do that legally at most public institutions and we have all heard that counseling can only work if the student wants it to). And then of course the tragedy as we all saw it on the news or through our friends and family.  Fifty-four people killed or injured – seeing their faces flash across the screen was heartbreaking.

So, what did I take from this, and why am I writing this post?  Agent Foust shared a story of one young woman who had left the Norris Building (where the mass shootings happened) to get a soda in another building.  When she came back to the building she found the doors chained shut, went to another set of doors, found them chained shut – so she climbed through a window to finish working on her paper – just assuming the doors were chained because of construction at the other end of the building.  My response – I would have probably done that as a student (although not sure I could have fit through the window). 

So as I sit here trying to figure out how to restart a campus safety campaign that encourages our students to take some responsibility to ensure their own safety – to raise awareness of concerns when they have them, etc., I’m reminded of the worst case scenario.  But how do we engage students without scaring them – that’s the question.

We aren’t invincible. How do we share that, yet help them be comfortable in our campus setting? What do you do on your campus to ensure safety and provide support?