Five months have passed since 27 students and five faculty lost their lives at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They were executed by Cho Seung-Hui, a mentally ill student who ended his well-armed rampage by taking his own life.

The incident at Virginia Tech sparked a national soul-searching among those responsible for, or dependent upon, campus safety. From governors and state legislatures on down to boards of trustees and college and university administrations, officials moved quickly to mandate official examinations of their own campus safety measures, emergency response procedures, communication systems and the status of mental health services. The hope is to take lessons from the tragedy so as to avert a similar incident, or respond effectively should one arise.

On campuses where faculty and staff have representation, unions have been among the first to ask the tough questions about how their members are protected. Not only is campus safety a working condition, it is a fundamental necessity for all who are engaged in teaching, learning and serving students.

Demanding Answers

After the Virginia Tech shootings, Dierdre Glenn Paul, president of the Montclair State University (MSU) Federation of Teachers/AFT in New Jersey, had to view with some skepticism her administration’s public assurance of its preparedness to prevent or deal with a cataclysmic event.

“At the end of the day, when cameras are gone, you still have the same situation as before. That is, colleges and universities nationally have two issues: How do you deal with emotionally volatile or potentially dangerous students? What have you done in a preventive fashion to address an event such as the one that took place at Virginia Tech?”

Paul, who is executive vice president of the Council of New Jersey State College Locals/AFT, says the union has posed these questions repeatedly to the administration, dating back to before the April shootings, because faculty routinely have to deal with troubled students. “Some of us have had these students and have seen that the university response is, frankly, inadequate.”

The university has distributed a CD with a plan. “But all the things they tell you to do in dealing with dangerous students were done at Virginia Tech, and look at the result,” Paul explains.The university also has distributed a pamphlet describing the psychological services available to students. But neither the CD nor the pamphlet tells faculty how to deal with the hostile student.

Likewise, the union has asked for more evidence that the university is working on an ongoing emergency response plan. Paul reports as an encouraging development that MSU closed down one quadrant of campus on Aug. 3 to run a drill staged by two town police municipalities, the New Jersey State Police and MSU campus police.

Stabbing Spurs ACTION

Suffolk County Community College in New York got its wake-up call three years ago when a student stabbed a professor before a room of stunned classmates. The attack on the teacher, who did recover, came with no apparent warning; yet it was later learned that three faculty members had each complained about the student’s “strange” behavior, says Ellen Schuler Mauk, president of the SCCC Faculty Association/AFT. But the complaints had just been lodged. “No one student personnel person knew that more than one faculty member had complained.”

After the incident, the president convened and chaired a campus safety committee including the campus head of security, the director of student services and, by design, a union representative, Sean Tvelia, grievance officer and a professor of physical science.

The committee identified two major issues, says Tvelia: “Knowing who is on campus when, and knowing what to do when you find someone exhibiting a violent pattern of behavior. How do you help not only the student but the faculty member dealing with the student?”

The committee recommended a system for tracking all cars parked on campus to be ready if an evacuation is ever necessary. Also at the committee’s recommendation, the college hired a mental health officer who is now the campus director of counseling services.

Since the stabbing, there’s been a change in the culture on campus. “One of the biggest changes was to recognize how vulnerable faculty are,” says Tvelia. Now when faculty call with a problem, they are directed to a student services clearinghouse.

What’s more, the college now views maintaining a safe campus as an ongoing activity. Twice a year, Suffolk brings in a psychologist, Charlie Clarke, to provide training for all new faculty and any others on how to deal with disruptive students. The sessions are always packed, says Tvelia.

SCCC also has been busy honing its emergency response plan. This summer, Schuler Mauk was asked to participate in a “tabletop version” of an emergency exercise conducted by the college and the Suffolk County Police Department. The exercise involved a simulated attack on a campus by armed intruders. The scenario incorporated elements from school attacks that have occurred throughout the country. It allowed an in-depth examination of procedures and actions that would be initiated to prevent or respond to an attack.

 “Suffolk is much further along than many,” says Clarke who is a professor of psychology and president of the Faculty Association/AFT at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y. He was called upon for his expertise and because his college is viewed as an excellent resource on safety and security matters.

Getting Wired for Safety

MCC provides all the public safety training in the region. Its mission, says Clarke, is to be at the forefront of technology, so the college’s attention to campus safety and security issues reflects that. “We’ve had a long-term, active [and] meaningful labor-management process. The college is relatively transparent on issues of health and safety. We bring something to the committee and have instantaneous access to the general counsel.”

Monroe is wired for safety. Every office and classroom has locks and telephones with a direct connection to campus security. Full- and part-time faculty are given ongoing training and master keys so they know how to use equipment and protocols to go into lockdown. The community college is now developing expertise in pandemic planning.

The New York State United Teachers Higher Education Council has undertaken a state-level investigation of campus safety following the Virginia Tech incident. The council, headed by William Scheuerman, president of the United University Professions at the State University of New York and an AFT vice president, is developing recommendations for universal safety and security policies for the 64-campus system.

SUNY has been exploring methods for emergency mass communication that range from sirens, public address systems and text messaging, according to a recent issue of New York Teacher. UUP member Rachel Reuben, director of Web communication and strategic projects at SUNY-New Paltz, is an emergency response planner who is figuring out ways to make it easy for faculty, staff and students to register their cell phones for instant communication. “It’s one of many tools we’ll have in our arsenal,” she says.

Paul Berger, assistant chief of police at SUNY-Albany, says his campus police force of 75 officers relies on annual drills to stay sharp and ready for anything. In July, he was in charge of mounting his first drill—an unannounced tabletop exercise activating the university’s emergency plan. “We presented the people in the campus’s emergency management team with a scenario, and officers acted as facilitators. It went quite well and we learned a lot. This is a skill that has to be practiced and reinforced.”

Troubled Students

Even as campuses look at the physical aspects of emergency planning, there remains widespread recognition of the gaps in preventing escalating incidents because of individuals’ mental health issues.

“Virginia Tech was huge and rattled cages all across the country,” says Chris Frizzell, director of the Counseling and Student Development Center at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and a member of the UM-D Faculty Federation/AFT. “On our campus, a number of departments have asked for people to come in and talk about how to deal with the mentally ill student, how to refer the student for assistance.”

A key to prevention is communication. Campuses have to have mechanisms for the offices of security, student judicial affairs and residence life to share information to the extent that they can, Frizzell notes. His campus uses threat-assessment teams to monitor potential problems, a practice in place in about half of the nation’s colleges and universities, according to the Wall Street Journal. Every Monday morning, a team including Frizzell and the heads of campus police, residence life, health services, judicial affairs and the administration meet to review police reports and other incidents. For reasons of confidentiality, Frizzell listens more than she speaks. “People who have major incidents will be mandated to come to the centers,” she explains. “If they don’t come, they’ll be suspended.”

There also are monthly meetings of the “line” workers in these offices who look at emergencies and evaluate what to do. There are limits to the discussion, of course, because of policies respecting student privacy. “Students won’t come if they don’t believe it’s confidential. Confidentiality is our product.”

Privacy Rights vs. Safety

A question that has come up during hearings on the Virginia Tech shootings is whether federal laws protecting patient rights tied the hands of professionals who could have intervened more aggressively with Cho. In the mental health field, juggling these obligations has been the subject of discussion and legal case law.

Some campus safety and counseling professionals have felt constrained by federal privacy and disability laws, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. These laws, the professionals say, have limited their options when working with troubled students, forcing them to worry about legal liability whether they intervene to remove a student or fail to remove the student.

Settlements in two lawsuits in the past year—one at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other at George Washington University—attest to the challenges.

The parents of an MIT student who died after setting herself on fire (possibly deliberately) sued the university for not informing them of their daughter’s deteriorating mental condition. MIT settled. Last year, GWU removed a student after he sought and received hospitalization for depression. The student sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act charging that he was being discriminated against. GWU settled.

The MIT case has affected policies at many colleges and universities. At UMass-Dartmouth, says Frizzell, “we developed policies that are published. If a student makes a suicide attempt, there will be parental notification. In Massachusetts, we have a statute written by a psychologist that says psychologists can break confidentiality if there’s a risk to life.”

The American College Health Association and other mental health organizations that focus on college-age adults have been documenting that more and more students are appearing on campus with mental health problems. There are many reasons for this, say psychologists: Students who in the past might not have been functional enough to consider going to college are now being diagnosed and treated earlier, which makes college an option for them. And institutions intent on attracting increasing numbers of students have welcomed all comers and are trying to accommodate them.

“This is a good thing that they’re here,” says Frizzell. “Most do fine.”

“But if they come here, get away from the parents who remind them to take their medications, stay up half the night and start using alcohol, then they’ll have a problem. Every year, we look more like a mental health clinic and less like a counseling center.”

For colleges, the main concern about students in mental distress is the harm they may do to themselves, not to others. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students, according to the Jed Foundation, a suicide-prevention organization. (But 18- to 24-year-olds who don’t go to college are twice as likely to be victims of suicide.) A 2006 survey by the American College Health Association shows the rate of students reporting ever being diagnosed with depression has increased 56 percent in the last six years, from 10 percent in spring 2000 to 16 percent in spring 2005. The Chickering Group, a college health insurance provider, found that student outpatient mental-health claims rose 64 percent between 2000 and 2003.

Yet colleges are not keeping up with the demand to build staff and services. “We should have six to nine full-time counselors for the size population [9,000 students] we have,” says Frizzell.  “We have five and a half. We’re holding it together with duct tape and bubble gum.” UMD’s experience with understaffing is common, say counseling professionals.

The Professional Staff Congress/AFT of the City University of New York made a proposal to the New York City Council requesting additional funds to ramp up the number of counselors at CUNY, says Iris DeLutro, a senior counselor at CUNY and vice president of the PSC. Currently CUNY has one counselor for every 5,000 students. The International Association of Counseling Services recommends one professional to every 1,000 to 1,500 students.

Monroe’s Charlie Clarke believes every counseling center should have on staff a “trained, dedicated psychologist who really specializes in disturbed kids.”

“Every semester, the union receives complaints about hostile students,” says Paul of Montclair State. “Every semester we get complaints about safety issues.”

Holding the administration’s feet to the fire “is not something I am prepared personally to let die.”