SCUP-VT

This page of news items and other timely resources is a service of the Society for College and University Planning.

We believe that many of the lessons learned from this kind of crisis are learned and quickly lost due to the haste of the events and the information flow. Please use the list to share your lessons learned in real time and, hopefully, we can share what we learned in the future.

SCUP also has a topical page of related references and links here, which you may find useful.

Virginia Tech has opened a formal archive about the April 16 shootings.

A 66-page document publicly available on the University of Central Florida website: http://ec.creol.ucf.edu/FinalReport_EmergComm.pdf. [Source: EDUCAUSE CIO Constituent Group email list]

Grief Counseling, Campus Security, and Risk Management: From The Chronicle’s Archives
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041811n.htm
A nice service, finding all of these and bringing them up for people to access. Thanks, Chronicle!

Can campus life be the same?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-18-vt-security_N.htm
“Many experts in higher education and school security predict that this week’s tragedy won’t dampen enthusiasm for college life: The freedom that makes the “open campus” occasionally susceptible to crime and violence is also what makes U.S. colleges alluring to students everywhere.” [USA Today]

Protecting student rights and students a balancing act
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-18-vt-seeking-help_N.htm
“As more emotionally disturbed youths than ever attend college, campus officials say they’re trying to keep students safe despite tough laws that limit college employees’ power over students’ lives. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives students with mental health problems the right to be at colleges unless they disrupt the academic environment.” [USA Today]

Laws Limit Options When a Student Is Mentally Ill
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19protocol.html?hp
“For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness.” [New York Times]

US universities still a top draw for international students
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p11s02-wogn.html
“Nikhil Mantrawadi, a 28-year-old Indian computer engineering student from Pune, is burning the midnight oil these days, hunching his tall frame over preparations for the Graduate Record Examination he is scheduled to take on May 30 . . . Indeed, he is considering applying to Virginia Tech because of its reputation. “That was an isolated incident,” he says of Cho Seung-hui’s shooting spree that left 32 people dead on Monday. “The massacre was committed by a student, not a terrorist. It could have happened anywhere.”“

VT shooting: black mark on an otherwise growing reputation
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p01s04-usgn.html
“One reason Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech university has become such an international incident is that the university itself has been transformed from a small college populated by what founding president Charles Minor called ‘plain lads’ into a diverse and increasingly international institution. Last year, some 565,000 foreign students attended US colleges and universities. Even here at Virginia Tech, nestled in the deep folds of the Appalachian lowlands, 7 percent of the nearly 28,500 students come from abroad. In some departments, 60 percent of the graduate students are foreign-born.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Why Did He Have to Be a …?
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/19/korean
“There’s a crucial moment early in many crime investigations when the first description of the assailant comes out. When the attack happens on campus, like it did Monday at Virginia Tech University, the initial question is obvious: student, faculty, staff or outsider? . . . by Wednesday the gunman’s ‘resident alien’ status had already emerged as a major storyline.” [Christian Science Monitor]

When Is It OK to Put a Student Away?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/student.counseling/index.html
But Gregory Eells of Cornell University’s health center points out that “a lot of the things that have been said about this young man are applicable to hundreds of thousands of college students, in terms of dark writings or violent writings, and even problematic behavior, even sometimes stalking behavior. That’s more common than you would like to believe.” [CNN]

University Says It Wasn’t Involved in Gunman’s Treatment
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19cnd-Virginia.html?hp
“Virginia Tech officials said today that they played no role in monitoring the psychiatric treatment of Cho Seung-Hui, the student responsible for killing 32 people and himself on Monday, after Mr. Cho had gone to a mental health center in late 2005.” [New York Times]

More from The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Campus safety gains sharper vision with new breed of surveillance cameras
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041906n.htm
- College police departments have become more professional, experts say
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041905n.htm
- Could officials have stopped Cho? A Q&A with a campus counseling expert
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041903n.htm
- Counselors say cases like Cho’s are hard to spot as students’ behavior becomes more extreme
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041902n.htm

Addressing the Challenge of Campus Security
A Special Report from AASCU
http://www.aascu.org/policy/special_report/campus_security.htm
The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a reminder that no campus, from those located in large urban settings to institutions nestled in small rural environments, is immune to being a potential target of violence. This information is intended to provide ideas and resources beneficial to presidents, chancellors and their leadership teams as they review both prevention and deterrence measures in their efforts to enhance campus security.

Effective Crisis Management for Students With and Without Disabilities
Audioconference: April 25, 2007, 12 – 1:30 p.m. ET
LRP, publishers of Dean & Provost, had this event scheduled before VT: “In this 90-minute audio conference, Attorney Allan Shackelford and Dean of Students Anne Lundquist combine their expertise to help you develop – and implement – effective student conduct policies and protocols for your entire student body. The presenters will discuss laws that affect your campus; specific incidents you may face; prevention policies; response techniques; and ways to deal with parents, faculty and the media in the aftermath of a student crisis. For more details, to register online or to print a registration form, visit: http://www.lrphighered.com or call 1-800-775-7654.”

Request for Resources for Virginia Tech
http://www.tltgroup.org/VaTechresources.htm
From the TLT Group: “We’re all struggling to understand what happened at Virginia Tech this week and to do whatever we can to support our friends at Virginia Tech . . . We’ve started a web page to compile resources to share and which might also be helpful to others. If you have something you’d like us tp add to the webpage, please send it to me.” Sally Gilbert, sallygilbert@tltgroup.org

Please share widely. Archive of links is at http://scup.backpackit.com/pub/1043492.

USA Today Coverage Is Extensive
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/virginiatech/default.htm
Including:
- Should college applicants get background checks?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-17-blcover_N.htm
- Technology becomes a coping mechanism
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-17-technology-coping_N.htm
- Gen Y shaped, not stopped, by tragedy
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-17-millenials_N.htm

The Chronicle of Higher Education Also
http://chronicle.com/
- When a national spotlight falls on a campus, public-relations officers feel the heat
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041805n.htm
- College risk managers weigh the benefits of emergency notification, other security measures
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041806n.htm
- New phone technologies can help colleges communicate campuswide in emergencies
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041807n.htm

Opinion: Bad Public Policy Contributes to the Death Count
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041809n.htm
“Indeed, portraying public problems in terms of individual stories may actually hinder effective policy responses. In a 1990 study, the political scientist Shanto Iyengar, of Stanford University, found that, when news-media stories about poverty spotlight poor individuals, viewers are far likelier to hold the poor person responsible for his plight than when the media spotlight structural forces, such as unemployment in the manufacturing sector. A logical implication of this study is that focusing on individual woes may curtail important debates about collective solutions to poverty.” [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

Evaluating the Response
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/18/techresponse
“Once police had briefed university officials about the reported violence, a crisis communication plan last updated in the wake of September 11 went into action. The plan, which designates a “core crisis team” and sets guidelines for keeping students, parents, police and the media informed, became the basis for the university’s response to that first shooting as well as the bloody mass killing that followed it some two hours later on the other side of campus.” [Inside Higher Ed]

Action and Realism on Security
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/18/security
“Emphasis on the “human element” is very much on college officials’ minds this week — how to identify potential killers, how to respond to a gunman, how to get students to take security seriously, how to communicate with students who view any e-mail that is remotely official as spam. College presidents have rushed out statements to assure students (and anxious parents) that good security measures are in place, and reviews based on the Virginia Tech tragedy have already started.” [Inside Higher Ed]

When Creative Writing Provides a Clue
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/18/writing
”’This is just a grotesque and terrible tragedy, but it’s a liability in teaching the arts that students in arts programs don’t always have the same boundaries that many other people have in their personal lives and in their imagined lives,’ says David Fenza, executive director of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.” [Inside Higher Ed]

Another Campus Danger: Fire
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/18/safety
“On a day when the issue of fire safety on campus brought the crowd, almost no one at this Capitol Hill event could avoid talking about the most recent college disaster . . . . Roughly 100 students have died in student housing fires since 2000, according to The Center for Campus Fire Safety. This has been the deadliest fire year for students since the nonprofit group began tracking such data seven years ago. Nearly 1,800 fires burn in student residences each year, and nearly 80 percent of fire-related deaths involving colleges take place in off-campus housing, the group says.” [Inside Higher Ed]

Threats Rattle Schools in 10 States
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070418/D8OIPHE80.html
“Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities, high schools and middle schools in at least 10 states on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student’s shooting rampage killed 33 people. Threats in Louisiana, Montana and Washington state directly mentioned the massacre in Virginia, while others were reports of suspicious activity in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan. In Louisiana, parents picked up hundreds of students from Bogalusa’s high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested Tuesday morning for threatening a mass killing in a note that alluded to the murders at Virginia Tech.” [My Way]

Shooter showed ‘big warning signs,’ students say
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html
“Meanwhile, one professor recalled being so concerned about Cho’s anger that she took him out of another instructor’s creative writing class and taught him one-on-one.” [CNN]

How Safe Are College Campuses?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0418/p01s04-ussc.html
“The shootings at Virginia Tech may challenge a cherished culture of openness.” [Christian Science Monitor]

The Urgent Need at Virginia Tech
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0418/p08s02-comv.html
“Instant communication in a crisis breeds expectation of fast response. That doesn’t always happen . . . Students and professors also acted with urgency and clarity. Resident advisers knocked on doors and told students to stay in their rooms. Professors instructed students to take cover. Students barricaded doors, saving themselves in at least one classroom. The student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, regularly updated its website – proving to be a valuable resource for the campus as well as the national media.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Campus Goes Online for Information and Comfort
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/18bloggerscnd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
“The university’s failure to keep students updated during the two hours between shootings has drawn considerable criticism. ‘Ironic,’ writes RonJ, a Virginia Tech employee, ‘that we’ve been having meetings about redesigning our emergency notification systems, to be able to include mass-blasting cell phones and stuff. I suspect that will be made a higher priority.’ [New York Times]

Universities Are on Alert, Rethinking Own Security
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601814.html?nav=rss_education
”’This is the nightmare for any college president or administrator,’ said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University in the District. ‘Every single one of us has been reading this all morning saying, “How can we be sure that doesn’t happen here?” And of course you can’t be 100 percent sure.’” [Washington Post]

Please share these messages widely.

Virginia Tech’s Home Page
http://www.vt.edu/
This page has been earning accolades for its effectiveness, post-incident. [Virginia Tech]

New Phone Technologies Can Help Colleges Communicate Campuswide in Emergencies
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041715n.htm
“Some college officials say they are confident they could warn students and others of a dangerous situation within seconds of its happening. That’s because their campuses have bought telephone systems that have come on the market only in the last few years.” [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

Multiple Forum Threads on the Chronicle Website
http://chronicle.com/
In addition to the main thread for this disaster – http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,36761.msg532239.html#new – there are now related discussion threads for:

Dealing With Dangerous Students
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,36787.0.html
Praying In Class
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,36806.0.html
Campus Gun Control
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,36808.0.html

Quiet Town Needs ‘Some Time to Heal’
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-16-virginia-tech-town_N.htm
Perspective on the university town of Blacksburg: “This college town of 41,000 with one main street, called “Main Street,” is anchored on one end by the Blacksburg Baptist Church and on the other by the National Bank of Blacksburg. Hanging from the street lamps are banners proclaiming “Blacksburg, a Special Place.” The median strips are planted with tulips.”

In this message: The Wikipedia source article, threats at other institutions, and details about the alleged killer coming forth:

Wikipedia Article: Virginia Tech Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre
This is being constantly updated. [Wikipedia]

Bomb Scares Rattle 3 Universities
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070417/university-bomb-threat???
“Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities in Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student’s shooting rampage killed 33 people.” [Huffington Post]

Killer’s Note: ‘You Caused Me to Do This’
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3048108
“Sources have now described the note, which runs several pages, as beginning in the present tense and then shifting to the past tense. It contains rhetoric explaining Cho’s actions and says, ‘You caused me to do this,’ the sources told ABC News.” [ABC News]

Student Was ‘Troubled,’ Says English Department Chair
http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2011
“Within the past two years, she said, faculty members repeatedly reported their concern about things the 23-year-old student had written in his creative-writing courses. The chair of the English department at the time, Lucinda Roy, passed those concerns along to administrators, Ms. Rude said.” [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Virginia Killer’s Violent Writings
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0417071vtech1.html?link=rssfeed
A play, titled “Richard Mcbeef,” allegedly written by Cho as a class assignment is here: “The college student responsible for yesterday’s Virginia Tech slaughter was referred last year to counseling after professors became concerned about the violent nature of his writings, as evidenced in a one-act play obtained by The Smoking Gun.” [The Smoking Gun]

Please share widely. A new handful of thought-provoking, useful, or informational items follow. Please note that we are archiving these messages and other links in a temporary page that is visible to anyone, here – http://scup.backpackit.com/pub/1043492. Thanks.

What Can Campus Cops Do? How Much Power Do They Really Have?
http://www.slate.com/id/2164299?nav=tap3
“The Virginia Tech police department comprises several dozen sworn officers and has received national accreditation from a private company known as the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. (To get the CALEA seal of approval, a campus police department must demonstrate adherence to 459 standards—and fork over a few thousand dollars.) The Virginia Tech police Web site lists the department’s primary activities as ‘patrol, investigation, and crime prevention,’ as well as answering ‘calls for assistance such as vehicle breakdowns or keys locked in vehicles.’” [Slate]

Other Schools Scramble: Universities Will Reconsider Own Security Plans
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-16-virginia-tech-security_N.htm
“Within hours of the massacre at Virginia Tech, some campus authorities, including those in Delaware and North Carolina, had already ordered increased campus patrols as a temporary precaution to calm students and faculty . . . In interviews with more than a dozen university and local law enforcement officials, most said it was too early to recommend permanent changes to their own emergency plans based on the Virginia Tech murders. Some believed the magnitude of the tragedy would prompt new proposals for security.” [USA Today]

Major Fatal Campus Shootings
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/shootings-timeline.html
A timeline from the New York Times.

Victims of Shooting Are Remembered
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17victims.html?hp
Some of the first stories about the lives of the victims and who they were. {New York Times]

After Deadly Massacre at Virginia Tech, Students Question University’s Response
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041701n.htm
“And even as Virginia Tech reeled from the massacre, many people questioned the university’s response. They wanted to know why it took more than two hours to notify the 26,000-student campus of the first shootings, and why more buildings were not locked down sooner. Meanwhile, outside Blacksburg, conservative pundits asked another question: Could the day’s tragedy have been curtailed if others on the campus were allowed to carry guns? (See article.) And as the May 1 admission deadline nears, students considering Virginia Tech are left to ponder a more basic question: Is it safe?” [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Colleges’ Safety and Risk-Management Experts Begin Looking for Lessons in Virginia Tech Shootings
http://chronicle.com/free/2007/04/2007041703n.htm
”’Emergency notification systems are becoming more and more important, but at 7 o’clock in the morning, how do you get a message out to everyone on your campus that they shouldn’t be there?’ asked Richard W. Bell, director of risk management at Loyola University New Orleans. ‘We don’t have an effective method to do that.’” [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Security On Campus, Inc.
http://www.securityoncampus.org/
A group to be aware of: “Security On Campus, Inc. is a non-profit (501©(3)) organization whose mission is to prevent violence, substance abuse and other crimes in college and university campus communities across the United States, and to compassionately assist the victims of these crimes . . . Security On Campus, Inc. believes that students and parents have the right to know about criminal activity on college and university campuses. Many schools are still not accurately reporting crime. Parents have the right to know about the academic and conduct failures of their students under age twenty-one.” [Security On Campus]

Tears, Pledges for Safety at Local (Seattle-area) Universities
http://www.thenewstribune.com/293/story/41028.html
”’Anytime there’s a tragic incident like this on a university campus, everybody feels it – all colleges,’ said Mike Wark, spokesman for the University of Washington Tacoma. ‘It reminds us that no campus is immune from violence. It can happen anywhere, and we’re all attuned to it, in part so we can see what we can learn.’”

The Collegiate Times has some good coverage:
http://collegemedia.com/

Including a list of confirmed victims:
http://www.collegemedia.com/stories/417-300am-none.html

Roanoke.com has some local perspectives:
http://roanoke.com/

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[introductory text removed as duplicative]

The Society for College and University Planning has a number of members, including active SCUP leaders, on the Virginia Tech campus. Our hearts go out to them, their colleagues, the student body and their relatives, and the local community. A good summary of the latest news is at the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://www.chronicle.com/news/.

Additional Sources of Information

Further, there are many useful resources at the Campus Relief website run by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the American Council on Education (ACE) with funding from TIAA-CREF: http://www.campusrelief.org. Additional resources can be found at the EDUCAUSE Business Continuity Planning website: http://connect.educause.edu/term_view/Business+Continuity+Planning and on SCUP’s pertinent Web document: http://www.scup.org/resources/topic_issue/crisis-disaster-mgmt.html.

Other Current Discussions

The Chronicle of Higher Education coverage is on its front page – http://www.chronicle.com – and it is running an interactive Web forum here: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,36761.0.html.

We know of two additional pre-existing email lists where more topically focused informative discussions are already happening. One is the University and College Webmasters list [uwebd], http://www.usask.ca/web_project/uwebd/, and the other is [cshema-l], the discussion list of the Campus Safety Health and Environmental Management Association, http://www.cshema.org/. Both are, as we write this message, focusing on faster, more effective ways of crisis-related communications.