Campus Crisis Management

A Comprehensive Guide for Practitioners

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• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000285130
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Campus Crisis Management is a practical resource that helps campus administrators evaluate, revise, or establish a comprehensive crisis management plan appropriate for their college or university. Filled with examples, assessment tools, and checklists, this book describes the individuals who should be involved in developing a campus plan, what a plan should include, as well as a variety of crisis events and issues that should be addressed in a comprehensive crisis management plan. Including contributions from renowned practitioners at all levels, this fully revised, new edition contains the must-have information on crisis management, such as:

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• How to develop a comprehensive crisis management system

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• The different types of crises using the crisis matrix

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• The structure, operation, and training of a crisis team

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• Strategies for working with the media

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• New chapters addressing behavioral intervention teams, active shooter situations, Title IX guidance, campus demonstrations, outbreaks of infectious and contagious diseases, and special event management.

From a senior administrator working with an institution-wide emergency operations team, to a new professional looking to develop plans and protocols to respond to critical incidents, Campus Crisis Management is a comprehensive guide to planning and preparing for campus emergencies of any scale.

PART I
Foundations of Crisis Management

Chapter One The Impact of Crisis

J. Michael Rollo and Eugene L. Zdziarski, II

Thanks to the variety in institutions of higher education today, opportunities abound for enriching student lives and enhancing our society by educating and preparing the next generation of leaders and citizens. Regardless of their background, precollege preparation, interests, or social status, students have opportunities to interact, learn, and experience life in all its wonder and intricacies. Urban, rural, public, private, large, small, faith-based, secular, commuter, residential, and other terms are used to categorize our institutions. Yet, despite our tendency to separate institutions into groups that seek to establish commonalities across what appears to be a diverse array of entities, one absolute that binds them all together is their core of students, faculty, and staff who live and learn at their campuses. With this interplay of people and institutions, the inevitable reality is that incidents and events that are characterized as crises are certain to occur. The impact of crises on the facilities and the institutions’ ability to accomplish their educational mission must be addressed, but it is the human side of the equation that begs our attention as educators committed to serving our communities.

TODAY’S ETHIC OF CARE

Historically, educational institutions’ control of student behavior and ability to function in loco parentis were the standards by which we measured our relationship to students and our commitment to the families who placed their children in our charge. That outdated legal relationship no longer guides our actions or philosophical positions. However, it did lead us to a modern institutional commitment to caring, respect, and concern for our students’ growth and development (Rhatigan, 2000).

This transition from legal guardian to caring educator has been gradual, and we remain connected despite our arm’s-length legal relationship with students. Bickel and Lake (1999) describe the death of in loco parentis as resulting from the civil rights movement, when students increasingly distanced themselves from universities and colleges and challenged institutions’ ability either to control their behavior or to intercede in their personal lives. This distancing between students and institutions led to a period in which the institutions acted as “bystanders.” As a result of increasing legal challenges and court decisions, institutions had no legal duties to students and were not responsible for harm (Bickel & Lake, 1999). Institutions seemed helpless to influence student life, and they struggled in the court of public opinion as student populations began to appear more disruptive and in need of greater direction and guidance. The need for some protection from harm, some entity to which to look for assistance, has led us to a new model, prevalent on campuses today, whereby it is believed that we have a duty to care for the students in our charge. Although some see this as a return to in loco parentis, it is more likely a period of transition, as a new relationship between students, their families, and the institutions that serve them evolves to address today’s expectations. The legal decisions that continue to refine this relationship must be monitored constantly and used to update the policies and procedures we follow in serving our students. However, the underpinning of this relationship, regardless of how we characterize or label it, is the ethic of care. Caring for the individual, providing support to those who can benefit from attention to their needs, and enhancing the human experience as educators and mentors underlie much of what we do in higher education. It may be the most important value we hold to direct our actions and responses during times of crisis, when tragedies overwhelm us as individuals and communities.

By basing our actions on an ethic of care for our students, staff, and faculty when we respond to crises, we put a human face on our institution. Although we all want our problems, concerns, and personal issues to matter to the institution, the institution as a bureaucracy tends to operate on its own set of values and priorities to accomplish its mission regardless of individuals’ personal needs. If the institution is to be successful in responding to crises over the long run, it must reach out to its constituencies with compassion, concern, and sensitivity to the situation at hand. The staff charged with first response must be free to engage the community affected by the tragedy without restrictions. The spokesperson for the institution, whether it is the president, a member of the media relations staff, or any number of possible administrators, must be able to speak directly to the affected communities about the desire to help ease any suffering or loss.

At some institutions, it is expected that this will occur as a matter of course. Families choose to send their children to smaller institutions with the belief that they will receive more personalized attention. Although many assume this is a clear expectation among parents of children at private colleges or universities, public institutions are not free from this expectation. At large institutions, although there may be a desire for personal attention, there is also likely a realization that students will be more anonymous on campus. The irony is that, in times of crisis, especially large-scale events, larger institutions are more likely to have the resources to respond to the situation whereas the small, “caring” institutions can easily be overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of the tragedy. Indeed, when the large, “impersonal” institution does respond with care and compassion, the benefits of this unexpected response are dramatic. Inability to respond compassionately may be expected from a large bureaucracy, but it is totally unacceptable at a small institution, especially if it has presented itself in its recruitment of students as a supportive environment.

Regardless of the size of the institution or expectation of the constituencies, the impact of the institutional response over time is profound. Did the college or university reach out to the student and his or her family and friends? Did the institution assist the academic department, and was the staff able to work through a difficult loss? Was there a sense of support and compassion among the staff? The emotions that arise out of these interactions go home with families and are shared with neighbors and friends. Stories of care and concern are told in residence halls and other living units, passed between students, and handed down to next generations. They are conveyed in the departments and help form a network of support among the staff and faculty as they return to their normal routines.

The converse is, of course, also true. The families who are helped but not cared for, interacted with but not embraced, responded to but not engaged, will return to their homes with a much different sense of what happened. The faculty or staff member who returns to the classroom or office with no sense of concern from the institution has no opportunity to enlarge the institution’s role as a community that cares for its members, one that reaches out to others in time of need and responds with compassion and dignity.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM EXPERIENCE

Over the past 50 years, as advances in technology have expanded the reach of televised media and communications, campus tragedies have become more prominent in our lives, regardless of where they occur. Our understanding of what can occur on college campuses affects our planning and preparation. Several specific incidents stand out—not so much for their uniqueness as for the impact they have had on our thinking and response to subsequent events, even when they are relatively minor in comparison. Neither the size nor the location of the institution, nor the scope of the crisis, has been as important as the impact of these crises on our collective communities of higher education.

University of Texas at Austin, 1966

The Texas Tower at the University of Texas at Austin stands as one of the most dominant landmarks on a college campus in the United States. At 307 feet, its height, in comparison to other buildings in the area, draws your eye to it immediately. Although not as tall as the nearby state capitol building, it is built on higher ground and thus gives the appearance of being taller (MacLeod, 2005). Constructed in 1936 as a centerpiece of the campus and community, it has, unfortunately, since 1966 been indelibly linked to the actions of Charles Whitman on August 1 of that year. After murdering his mother and wife earlier in the day, at approximately 11:30 a.m. he entered the tower with a footlocker full of weapons and ammunition and proceeded to the observation deck on the 28th floor. Over the span of the next 96 minutes, he killed 14 people and injured dozens, using skills that had earned him a sharpshooter’s badge while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps (MacLeod, 2005).

Although neither the first nor the last shooting on a college campus, this incident stands out for its undeniable impact on the community and the nation. On-site television coverage of news events was still developing. In 1966, a television camera was a bulky and cumbersome apparatus to use and most television crews were still using film to capture images for delayed broadcasts, but with an incident of this magnitude. In a state capital with established local media, details were provided immediately to the local population by way of on-site radio coverage (KLBJ: The story of Austin radio, n.d.). Students and area residents recall tuning in to the radio and hearing about the tragedy as it unfolded (Preece, 1996). Despite being warned to stay away by local radio reporter Neal Spelce, who was crouched behind his mobile broadcast unit in the shadow of the tower, area residents, including students, instead loaded their high-powered deer rifles and headed to campus to return fire alongside local police officers (Preece, 1996). Later, film shot by Gordon Wilkinson, a reporter from KTBC, captured the definitive images of the tragedy, including images of the wounded and unforgettable images of students who risked their lives to rescue fellow students (Preece, 2011).

Just one week earlier, it had been discovered that Richard Speck had killed nine student nurses in their dormitory in Chicago. With this event still in mind, the media’s on-site coverage of the Austin killings turned the nation’s attention to that campus. The August 12, 1966, cover of Life magazine—one of the standards by which we as a nation gauged the importance of an event in that era—showed a photo of the Texas Tower taken by Shel Hershorn through the bullet-shattered glass of a store window in Austin; it connected us all to the incident (Life Magazine, 1966).

In addition to an increasing sensitivity to this type of tragedy on campuses, police agencies across the nation began developing a new type of response. The first Special Weapons and Tactical Teams (SWAT), created at that time, were believed to be a direct response to this incident (Snow, 1996). These teams forever changed our university security operations.

Kent State University, 1970

Reaction to the military draft of college-age men was beginning to manifest in larger and more violent disruptions on college campuses in some communities. The internal conflict between their ambivalence toward the war in Vietnam and a desire to serve their country as their parents had during World War II was growing. On the campus of Kent State University in Ohio over a four-day period in May 1970, the demonstrations escalated in violence and destruction. Windows in local businesses were smashed, the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) building on-campus was burned to the ground, and the National Guard was brought in to control the situation. On May 4, the university banned a planned noon rally, believing that the National Guard’s presence made the demonstration illegal. Shortly after noon, the demonstrators (described as a core group of about 500 and as many as 2,000 “cheerleaders” who came to show support) began to throw rocks at the National Guard troops, who had ordered them to disperse. Through clouds of tear gas, the troops moved forward to disperse the crowd with loaded weapons, and after retreating to the top of Blanket Hill, turned and fired into the crowd. Four students were killed and nine wounded in a period of 13 seconds (Lewis & Hensley, 1998), and the now-famous Pulitzer Prize—winning photo of Mary Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, screaming over the body of Jeffrey Miller was splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the country (Tuchman, 2000).

Campuses would never be the same again. Antiwar efforts expanded, students who had previously been ambivalent about the issue were galvanized to action, and new allies of the core antiwar demonstrators added their support. Campuses closed or canceled classes for varying periods of time to minimize additional disruption, but the trust between the students and the institutions they attended was damaged significantly and would require years to repair. In some cases, it never has been repaired.

Lehigh University, 1986

In April 1986, Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old freshm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Foundations of Crisis Management
• Part II: Crisis Management Systems
• Part III: Contemporary Crisis Management Issues
• Part IV: Sustaining Campus Preparedness into the Future
• Appendix I: Crisis Debriefing
• Appendix II: Counseling Center Mutual Aid Agreement
• List of Contributors
• Index