Narrowing the Gap Between
Success and Disaster
By Bryan Crum
A single tragic day at Virginia Tech highlighted the need to shorten the response rate in a crisis from hours to seconds. Frequent quotes from students at Virginia Tech during the dreadful April day were, “I didn’t know what was going on,” and “I just wanted to know what to do”. Communicating ongoing vital news, information, and instructions during a disaster to the entire campus community without delay has become critical. The cost of an emergency communication system might seem out of reach for many colleges, but through partnering with other institutions it might be more affordable than you think.
During 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, landline phones and cell phone networks became jammed because of extremely high call volumes. At Virginia Tech many people trying to make a call on or near campus heard a busy signal. However, students were able to send and receive a short service message (SMS), better known as text messaging. As a result, many students stayed in touch by “texting” each other.
A valuable lesson learned from Virginia Tech was that students use their cell phones more than any other communication medium—whether it is during a typical day or during an emergency on campus. Many students are constantly on the move and are not checking their email or a web page. Many others are listening to their iPod and not the radio. School sirens do not communicate specific information and students in buildings or off campus can not always hear them. During an emergency, a college needs to communicate to students in whichever way that is most effective. Today it is SMS text messaging. Next year, it may be something else.
A mass notification system (MNS) communicates to students, faculty, and staff in as many methods as possible or in whatever mode of communication that is relevant to the particular college or university. For instance, a fax machine may have been a good way to communicate to faculty and staff ten years ago, but not today. Most college employees now prefer email.
On the other hand, most students on campus today consider emails outdated technology. Recent internal studies conducted by several universities found that as many as 15% of students had email inboxes that were full and no longer accepting emails. Students prefer their own cell phones to campus landline phones. Many institutions each year pull the phone lines out of dorm rooms because students aren’t using their campus dorm landline.
Dr. Lawrence Dotolo, President of the Virginia Tidewater Consortium for Higher Education summarized it best by stating, “Since a campus is so spread out, sending a text message to students’ cell phones is the best way to reach everyone quickly.”
Within moments your campus message is simultaneously sent to everyone in the system. In the coming years, as new technologies are developed and as social preferences change, MNS will keep up with the times and deliver messages on those newer mediums as well.
MNS are web-based, so they do not rely on your own school’s technological infrastructure. For instance, an MNS that is installed on your server or your network is useless when the power goes out or when your network is down or crippled by a virus.
Web-based MNS that are located in data centers around the country are still accessible from a cell phone that has web access and its own backup power. Hence, web-based systems can act as a failsafe communications tool. The top notification systems are certified daily as “hacker safe” by third party independent testing.
New York City College of Technology, a member institution of CUNY, has already installed a MNS and found it to be an effective way to communicate with its students, faculty, and staff.
Flex Your Consortia Muscle when Buying
If you are a member college or university of a higher education consortium, you have the unique opportunity to negotiate a lower cost for this MNS service. Since the system is web-based, no software or hardware will need to be shipped to your campus. No extra phone lines will need to be installed. Training to use the system is done online and over the phone. The Tennessee Independent Colleges and University Association (TICUA) consortium has already taken advantage of MNS.
Pricing is typically based on the number of people using the system. As more people use the system, the cost per capita drops. For a consortium, this translates into a higher economy of scale if the member colleges buy in bulk rather than trying to purchase a system alone.
Dr. Dotolo at the Virginia Tidewater Consortium is presently researching MNS for his 15 member institutions. Dr. Dotolo concluded that, “It makes a lot of sense. Institutions can come together and leverage the resources to get a better price.”
The tragic events of 911, Katrina, and Virginia Tech brought to light the imperative need for quick response communications systems for all institutions in the United States. Many solutions are already available to colleges, universities and consortia. Some of your valuable time now researching mass notification systems can save critical hours, minutes, and even seconds later when a disaster hits.
Bryan Crum is the director of communications at e2Campus, a technology company resolving higher education communications challenges. He can be reached at (703) 568-5500 or at bcrum@omnilert.com.
Reporting Red Flag Behavior to
Identify and Manage Risk on College Campuses
By Heather M. Stern
His English professor, Lucinda Roy, describes his writings as disturbing and “dripping with anger”. She was so concerned that she decided to remove him from class and tutor him privately. His classmates described his work as very graphic and extremely disturbing. His roommates claimed that he was sullen and withdrawn, and often seemed to be out of touch with reality. Clearly Seung-Hui Cho exhibited troubling behavior, but it wasn’t brought to light until that tragic day in April of 2007 when he killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech and then turned the gun on himself.
So how could someone like Cho, who had obvious signs of threatening behavior, fall through the cracks? The reality is that suspicious behavior and questionable activities occur daily on college campuses. But, as at Virginia Tech, there is no way to “connect the dots” between these activities. In fact, one recommendation given by the Virginia Governor’s Panel which investigated the Virginia Tech shootings is that colleges and universities, “should recognize their responsibility to a young, vulnerable population and promote the sharing of information internally, and with parents, when significant circumstances pertaining to health and safety arise.”
According to the non-profit organization Security on Campus, 80% of crimes on campus are committed by students against students. So how do schools know the character of the students they admit to their universities? Some schools are asking applicants if they have ever been charged with a misdemeanor or felony, or even if they have been previously dismissed from another institution.
Some schools are conducting background checks on student employees, faculty and staff. While this is a good start, it does not do enough to reduce the risk to campuses. Traditional students enroll in college at the age of eighteen, so any record would most likely be in a juvenile court and protected. In the case of international students, international background checks are expensive and time-consuming. In addition, the name may get lost in translation from one country to another and therefore generate inaccurate results.
While background checks may give a view of crimes committed in the past, another system is needed to monitor daily events on campus. So how are universities protecting their students, faculty, and staff from potential harm? Most colleges have a judicial system in place that tracks incidents once they occur.
But what about behavior that is suspect, but doesn’t necessarily warrant a written violation? What is lacking on many college campuses is a proactive system that identifies red flag behavior and focuses on intervention and prevention. Such a system could be compared to the “neighborhood watch” programs used for decades to reduce crime in our communities. These programs are proven to lower crime rates by uniting and empowering the community. According to the Abilene, Texas, Police Department, “national statistics show that neighborhoods involved in active programs are between 17% and 51% less likely to be victims of crime.” This “neighborhood watch” on campuses should go beyond observation and include a method of collecting data in a centralized, consistent, systematic manner.
Dr. Stephanie Hughes and Dr. Rebecca White of RiskAware recently conducted a focus group for their risk management firm to discover how universities currently collect data and assess threats on campus. Participants in this group, whose job titles ranged from Resident Assistant to Dean of Students, represented small, mid-size, and large institutions throughout the United States. One common theme was increased concern about safety on campus and the lack of measures to address potential threats.
One respondent in the focus group stated, “As a small residential college, there is a lingering perception that we will be able to simply catch people who are falling through the cracks and become aware of problematic behavior because of our size. I feel that is no longer as true as it may have once been, especially since we have more issues of significant mental health incidents than we should for our size.”
When asked about the greatest challenges faced by their university as it seeks to ensure campus safety, one focus group participant noted, “. . . trying to be one step ahead of what ‘could’ happen.” This is further evidence that such a proactive system is needed in our colleges and universities. An ideal system might include a centralized process, analytical features, and an anonymous reporting option. Keeping information in a centralized manner is important when dealing with various incidents reported throughout a campus.
A college freshman is worried about her roommate who seems deeply depressed, and confides in her resident assistant. A suspicious van circling the parking lot near the dorms is reported to campus safety. An anonymous student leaves a note for the Dean of Students alleging his professor is being offensive in the classroom. These are typical examples of information reported to different departments within schools. The next step might be to record them in a centralized database system, such as a web-based reporting platform.
As stated in a 2006 issue of Inc. Magazine, when used in the corporate world, organizations with risk reporting platforms in place suffered half the financial losses from employee fraud than those with no such platform in place. This statistic is based on 508 companies surveyed and illustrates that such platforms generate results. These results could easily transfer to the higher education environment, reducing the amount of risk on campus.
In a survey that complemented the focus group conducted by Dr. Hughes and Dr. White, university representatives were asked the question, “How many incidents are reported in an average month?” Five-percent of respondents answered “less than 5,” 46.7% answered “6-14,” 13.3% answered “15-29,” 0% answered “30-49,” and 20% answered “50 or more.”
With so many incidents to sort through, how does university staff analyze the information? There needs to be a way to track commonalities in reports, such as how many times a particular student or campus location appears in a report.
Administrators need a risk assessment solution that can take bits and pieces of reported information in order to predict trends, to identify patterns, and, most importantly, to intervene to prevent a crisis or tragedy situation from occurring.
An anonymous reporting function could allow students, faculty, and staff to make a report while staying out of the line of fire. It might encourage reporting by those who may be hesitant to get involved, but are concerned about a certain activity or behavior.
While this may be a new concept in the higher education arena, it has been well documented in corporate environments. According to Jacob Blass, president of Ethical Advocate, “An external, confidential, anonymous reporting mechanism serves as an early warning system, enabling organizations to react quickly to investigate issues, and often resolve problems prior to increased malfeasance, costly stealing, litigation, or negative publicity. It also creates a culture of ethical behavior that over time will diminish the prospects of these actions.” So the question becomes: What does the university do with the information it receives?
Carolyn Wolf and Brett Sokolow, attorneys specializing in mental health on campuses, differentiate among distressed, disturbed and dysregulated students. Distressed students are emotionally troubled and could be experiencing situational stressors. These students should be confronted and offered resources. Disturbed students, on the other hand, are behaviorally disruptive, possibly substance abusing, and/or destructive to others. These students should be confronted and referred for professional services.
The most severe category, the dysregulated student, is suicidal, aggressive, hostile, and/or self-injurious. These students require referral to counseling services or a more organized intervention.
The goal is to intervene with students who may pose a threat and, by following existing university protocol, prevent disruptive behavior from escalating.
According to a recommendation by the Virginia Governor’s Panel, “Incidents of aberrant, dangerous, or threatening behavior must be documented and reported immediately to a college’s threat assessment group, and must be acted upon in a prompt and effective manner to protect the safety of the campus community.”
Other recommendations by the panel require “incidents of aberrant, dangerous, or threatening behavior” to be documented and reported immediately to the dean, the school’s threat assessment group, and the counseling center and parents.
College and university campuses are open environments, making them vulnerable to crime and other negative activity. According to the article “Safe on Campus,” published in 2008 in the Reader’s Digest, there are 40,000 burglaries, 3,700 forcible sex offenses, 7,000 aggravated assaults and 48 murders reported by the 6,000 higher education institutions in the United States annually. In addition, mental health issues, such as suicide and eating disorders, are on the rise.
One important solution for college and universities in making a dent in these staggering statistics might be implementing a centralized system that provides a proactive analytical and anonymous reporting platform, which might increase the possible identification of threatening behavior so that appropriate action can be taken to prevent a crisis.
Heather M. Stern is the director of operations at RiskAware, a risk management firm serving the higher education arena. She can be contacted at (859) 402-8255, or at hstern@riskaware.com.
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