Summary: Gubernatorial Task Force For University Campus Safety

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recognizes active shooters as a threat to healthcare facilities and encourages them to incorporate planning and preparedness into their emergency operation plans. A guide was developed, and backed by the DHS, FBI, US Department of Justice, and Federal Emergency Management Agency, focused on prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery, as well as stressing the importance of plans

Many of us know at least a few friends who were formerly straight-A, no-drama, carefree young adults who experienced a mental meltdown during their years at college. Most recover. Some don’t. Most university faculty have their hands tied because of confidentiality laws that prohibit them from calling parents to wave a red flag. In Animal House to Big Brother: Student Privacy and Campus Safety in an Age of Accountability Ron Chesbrough analyzes the pressure college administrators face when they have to make decisions about campus safety and the college students’ right to privacy.

On April 16th 2007 at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a student with psychological problems began a two hour killing spree that left 33 dead (Reader). The massacre that occurred at this school is now the worst recorded incident in the history of the United States and eclipses the University of Texas massacre of 1966. In the wake of tragedies like these, students, teachers and administrators propose more measures to make us feel safe on campus. But why weren't these measures in place before? School administrators and police have a responsibility to protect their students and faculty on campus, and these instances clearly shown a lack of fulfilling that responsibility. And yet several campus' refuse to allow law-abiding and

To begin, it is very important to train all university personnel on proper protocol when an incident occurs. This is primarily true due to the often large and diverse backgrounds of college campus. What makes a college so unique can also be the reason for unforeseen circumstances to occur. As such, all viable personnel should be trained. The content of the training will be universal and apply to stakeholders. The training will occur twice a year in order to provide new

Violence has devastated many college campuses such as the infamous school shootings in Connecticut and Virginia, taking the lives of many and triggering a nationwide scare. These unfortunate incidences are becoming more and more frequent, thus causing panic to arise within innocent students, faculty, and parents. However, in order to augment and ensure campus safety, schools and universities must first take the time, efforts, and finances to implement a secure learning environment. The first measure that schools should adopt is the updating of established security policies and procedures for regulatory school days and for times of crisis. With the continuous advancement of the society’s technology and knowledge or changes in new campus construction,

Once that plan is recognized, the people responsible for responding should also be identified, which is usually known as the crisis team. After the crisis team is formed, criteria, procedures, and logistics will be discussed. The school-based crisis team will usually consist of those individuals who are highly valued by the school administration and who hold the title of a school administrators, nurses, psychologists, and counselors. In order to have a successful crisis team, they must hold crisis team meetings, planning, staff development training, and regular communication with the entire school staff. Each crisis teach should have a team leader to be in charge of the entire crisis team and take the lead in organizing, planning, training,

Crisis can occur on a personal or societal level. When a person experiences personal trauma their experience of a situation or event can leave them feeling as though they have exhausted his/her coping skills, self-esteem, power and social support. These can be situations where a person is making suicidal threats, experiencing threat, witnessing homicide or suicide, or experiencing personal loss. While a person is experiencing a crisis on the individual level it is important for counselors to primarily assess safety. Societal or mass trauma can occur in a number of settings and typically affects a large group or society. These are instances such as school shootings, terrorist attacks, and natural disaster. As a counselor, my primary concern

Sexual Violence defined by the United States Center for Disease Control as “penetrative and non- penetrative acts…[occurring] when a perpetrator commits sexual acts without a victim’s consent” is an issue finding itself highly concentrated on collegiate campuses nationwide (Basile et al. 1). Statistically speaking “one in five women, and a substantial number of men, [will experience] attempted or completed sexual assault during their college career”(OAESV 2). These numbers are utterly horrific, and reflect the decreased safety campuses nationwide are experiencing. Students enrolled in the higher education system are increasingly being put in danger of becoming victims, and victims live in constant fear and doubt of their safety on campus. While the perpetrators of these crimes are ultimately to blame for the danger they present, college and university tendencies in sexual assault prevention and response play a direct role in decreasing levels of campus safety nationwide. Though the higher education system has much room for improvement in many areas pertaining to sex crimes, specific issues such as the weak relationship between campus crisis centers and universities, increasing leniency in perpetrating student athletes, and the overabundance of response rather than prevention programs on campus are a few major patterns contributing to reduced campus safety. These dangerous patterns, common among many universities and colleges, foster campus environments aiding the

Approximately 55 million children are enlisted in the U.S. educational system, split into 17,000 public school attendants and 29,000 private school members (Council on School Health, 2008). The need for school emergency planning has been recognized for a long time, but until the last few decades, attention fell solely on preparing for natural disasters such as fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes. However, due to a series of heavily mediated school shootings starting with the late 1990s, efforts increased considerably to cover the need for school emergency planning and the importance of coordinated disaster response to a school-located mass casualty incident (Graham et al, 2006).

The organization of the Crisis Management team is listed in Appendices A and B, and the organization chart of the Fort Worth Police Department is listed in Appendix E. It is delineated by job title in order to accommodate future changes in the chain of command. Each member should appoint a “second” to take their place in case of unavailability for whatever reason. All staff members, and their seconds, should be required to attend all Crisis Response Plan staff planning meetings.

A car accident, a murder, a robbery. And while not every can endure such a severe reaction to each situation, there is a good reason to understand that these types of events can induce a large amount of panic and fear. Most Law enforcement officers use crisis intervention as a bit of damage control for a person’s future mental health. These are short-term goals, just used to ensure the person can endure the immediate circumstances. The behavioral health professionals will handle the repair therapy that will have to done after the fact if

Working in a school system is very important to create safety for the students and employers and to build a relation between both the school and community including law enforcement. All schools should have an updated/revised planned for every crisis such as school safety, inclement weather, health issues, terrorism and or violence. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to analyze a School’s Crisis Plan

To improve safety we will need to look to see if any changes need to be made with our CMT, crisis management plan, or training requirements (Crandall et al., 2013). Do we need to appoint more members to our CMT in the event of an “active shooter,” or maybe a new employee has a military or law enforcement background that could be useful in managing this type of crisis? Using a cell phone during this crisis is not safe, so an alternate way of contacting the CMT and communicating will need to be developed (Crandall et al., 2013). Being familiar with planned strategies can help improve safety during crisis.

In the case of an active shooter within the care setting, there must be a strategic plan that maximizes the organization’s ability to properly coordinate the safety of personnel and that of the patients. Porter- O' Grady and Malloch (2015) state “Effective planning includes specific engagement and anticipation of leadership response in implementing designated activities in response to signal or trigger events” (p. 292). The first step in this process is training. All hospital staff will go through unit level in service to teach them on how to be able to recognize signs of a potentially dangerous situation and ways to prevent an incident. During the planning stage, a hospital crisis team supervisor will be appointed; their role will be to facilitate communication with emergency personnel and local officials for key information such as the number of victims and/or hostages, number, location and description of shooter. They will also be the contact resource for corridor/door keys, floor plans and phone numbers for each area.

As a Crisis Management Consultant for the Penn State Board of Trustees I would have taken swift and decisive action to reorganize how Penn State was handling the Jerry Sandusky crisis. To begin with, I would have quickly formed a crisis management team consisting of outside crisis management public relations and media specialists, legal advisors, skilled investigators, and members of the university Human Resources, Legal, and Public Relations staff that we not involved in the scandal (Fahn, 2012). Thus, enabling the crisis management team to balance the expertise of the outside crisis management experts with the knowledge university employees would have of university policies, procedure, culture, and the sensitivities of key stakeholder constituencies.