Talking Stick - September/October 2008 - 40

SaFe HaRboR The University of Wisconsin in Madison has organized an Interdisciplinary Team, or “I-Team,” which consists of the housing department, the university police, the dean of students, counseling services, and the disability office. The team meets every two weeks to share information and determine if particular students are experiencing problems. In response to Virginia Tech, Wisconsin also added the Threat Assessment Response Team, including legal services, to assess if there is an indication of threat to anyone on campus. Harvard builds relationships among departments with their Administrative Board, which meets for two to three hours a week. They also assign liaisons from the counseling department to housing, and they incorporate mental health training JameS DaViS, ViSual arTS SPeCialiST, STuDeNT affairS, eaST CarOliNa uNiVerSiTy in the halls. “We have very open communication between our college and our programs,” says Paul Barreira, director of behavioral health and academic counseling. “Once you start doing these things, it builds community and starts conversation.” All these institutions, however, stressed that information goes out only on a need-to-know basis, which may not include parents. Barreira acknowledges that although they cannot call parents in most situations, “We look to parents as another resource to help students be successful. We have a more qualitative assessment of what’s going on in the student’s life, and we assess whether a conversation with parents would be helpful or necessary. One challenge is making sure we do connect the dots with who needs to know.” With student privacy rights on the table for debate, institutions are careful not to go overboard. More than half of surveyed colleges and universities had considered installing metal detectors, and nearly half had considered installing closed circuit cameras in classrooms, but most of these institutions eventually rejected the plans. Similar outcomes surfaced regarding background checks and admissions policies. Dr. Eells agrees that professionals must prioritize the success of students rather than focus excessively on an unlikely crisis. “From a statistical standpoint, things like threat assessments will have false positives. The real risk isn’t there.” A similar group of departments, the Intervention Team, meets weekly at Rensselaer to identify potential problems. They can also express any concerns they have about academic problems or behavioral issues on a Web site to help make sure that students get appropriate referrals. inFoRMation teCHnology ReSPonSe to eMeRgenCieS: wHat iS being done and wHat iS CoMing by Brian Stroup E 0 mergency systems and protocols that are in place on college and university campuses save countless lives every year. In response to an increasing number of security threats on college campuses, housing administrators are turning to technology to combat the problem or at least to minimize it. Response Tools Currently campuses are using two main forms of IT response to emergencies: text messages and e-mail. With a text messaging system, every enrolled student receives a text message directly on their personal cell phone stating the emergency and the next step they should take. One disadvantage of this system is that not all students have cell phones. To make this response option possible, some schools are providing them to students. The other popular IT response system is e-mail. With an e-mail alert system, every enrolled student receives an automatically generated e-mail from the university informing them of the emergency and the next step. CONTINUES 60 Talking Stick

Talking Stick - September/October 2008

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