When parents and students arrive at the main gate of the University of Mary Washington for freshmen orientation, University Police Chief Michael Hall is there to meet and welcome them to campus. “That’s just a commitment that I have for myself and my team,” he says. “We are committed to safety and we are committed to the safety of this community.”
Every year, Hall gives a 30-minute campus safety presentation to parents. He starts off by showing pictures of his wife and children. “I say ‘That’s my family, and now you are part of the University of Mary Washington family’,” he says.
At the end of the presentation, Hall says parents will come up to him and tell him: “‘I am leaving my pride and joy with you.’ That’s a huge, huge weight to carry. It’s not just the police chief, but the university as a whole. It’s a team that makes it work. But, that parent, when something goes wrong, they are looking to the police chief and saying ‘Hey, what went wrong? Why did it happen?’ That’s why I constantly interact with our parents, our students and our community to build that trust.”
As of late October, there had been at least 24 school shootings across the country ranging from mass causalities (17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and 10 at Santa Fe High School in Texas) to aggravated assaults with a deadly weapon (a 15-year-old girl was shot by her ex-boyfriend at Italy High School in Texas). College and universities also saw violence. On March 2, two people were killed during a domestic incident in a Central Michigan University dormitory. Six days later, a student was injured after a shooting at an apartment complex on the University of South Alabama campus.
Using the same time frame, more students died in school shootings than United States military personnel in combat operations.
Virginia, of course, has its own history with school shootings, most notably the shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech in April 2007 that claimed the lives of 32 people. It remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and its shadow, even more than 10 years later, looms large across the campus.
Northern Virginia Magazine spoke with six higher education institutions in Virginia, and all agreed that campus safety is a top priority, with many reviewing their safety practices, procedures and training at least annually.
“We review our protocols,” says Virginia Commonwealth University Police Chief John Venuti. “We do exercises. We do after action reports after we do exercises. I think the more important piece is we constantly keep our eye on what is going on nationally and we look at many of those (school shooting) incidents. As we look at what transpired, sometimes there are different things that happened and then we go back and look at our policies, protocols and procedures and make sure that if something similar in nature happens that we are prepared to respond.”
Freshmen Safety Orientation
College of William & Mary Associate Vice President for Public Safety and Police Chief Deb Cheesebro and her staff also meet with new students and parents during freshmen orientation. They’re goal is to help them understand the role the police department plays on campus and educate them on laws and resources if they are coming from out of state or a different country.
While they are a trained law enforcement agency, they also provide assistance to students who may be in need of mental health counseling or have questions about situations involving alcohol or assault. “The fact that we are a police agency doesn’t mean that we have a certain line that stops at just enforcement,” Cheesebro says. “Our services are far above that. It is just one tool that we have. We would rather work far more in the prevention area and assisting and supporting students, especially if they are in distress or if they see another student in distress.”
Cheesebro often gets positive feedback from parents after speaking to them about safety procedures. “They feel better being more informed about how that all works,” she says. “They have a sense William & Mary is a relatively safe campus, but I think seeing the faces, the names, hearing the training, watching us interact together, they get more of a sense on how that occurs on a day-to-day basis.”
At the University of Virginia, police officers and representatives from the Office of Safety and Emergency Preparedness distribute safety materials and answer questions about safety during the new student orientations each summer, according to Wesley P. Hester, deputy university spokesperson. New students also attend a mandatory safety talk led by their resident advisor, who distributes a student safety guide that covers tools and resources to help keep students safe. In addition, all members of the UVA community receive an email at the start of each semester with a message encouraging them to “Take 3” minutes to be aware of their surroundings and to consider how they would stay safe under various conditions.
VCU offers a comprehensive, required new student/parent orientation broken into different sections over two days, including a video created by their police department answering the most commonly asked questions about safety from parents.
Venuti says orientation is important because “we want everyone to understand when we tell them there is an emergency or crisis. They are not going to know what to do if we don’t specifically inform them of what our policies are, what our protocols are and what we expect them to do in the event of an emergency. So we do (a presentation at orientation) in an effort to keep everyone safe.”
One unique program that VCU offers is Beyond Orientation: Partnering for Success in Today’s University—a semester-long class for parents of freshmen students. Each week a different campus leader leads the class, including Venuti teaching one lesson on campus safety. “No one expects nothing to happen anywhere, right? But I think what parents do expect if something does happen, they expect to see a response from a police department. The ability to dialogue with parents lets them know we are a capable, competent professional law enforcement agency that partners with the City of Richmond and we work really, really hard and we take student safety in an urban environment here at VCU very, very seriously, and these sessions allow me to communicate that commitment to parents.”
Longwood University in Farmville also offers a talk from their police chief during freshmen orientation. “We want our community to be as safe as possible and the best way to do that is for everyone to have as much information about keeping themselves and everyone around them safe at all times so they can use the best judgement in any situation,” says Matthew McWilliams, assistant vice president of communications.
A majority of the students at the orientation are living by themselves for the first time and the university wants them to know what resources are available to them, says McWilliams. Parents also need to feel comfortable with their children’s new home. “If they run into a situation, there are a lot of resources that are at their fingertips to get the help that they need to stay safe and focus on going to class, getting papers written and getting a great career,” McWilliams says.
For incoming students at Virginia Tech, the campus police department and the Office for Emergency Management make sure they let students know about their services as soon as possible, whether that be at the orientation fair or through special presentations to both students and their parents. “Both of our offices are actively engaged, not only with all new incoming students, but their entire time that they’re here at Virginia Tech, however long that might be,” says Kevin Foust, Tech’s chief of police and director of security.
On Campus Safety Mechanisms
An integral part of security involves officers being visible on campus through bike, foot or vehicle patrols. Many campus police forces are also utilizing technology to keep students safe.
William & Mary provides students, faculty and staff with access to two free mobile safety apps—Crisis Manager and Rave Guardian. Crisis provides quick access to the school’s emergency response guide detailing what to do in a situation. Rave allows users to set a safety timer if they are in an unfamiliar area or alone, which is monitored by friends and family who may call police if there is an issue.
“We really do emphasize that (students) are an equal partner in safety and security on the campus,” Cheesebro says. “The way you keep the campus safe is that everybody takes responsibility for communicating information when the information becomes available.”
Virginia Tech has its own alert system, VT Alert, which the school emphasizes is only used in emergency situations to avoid confusion about the seriousness of an event, “If we send an alert it’ll have three pieces of information: what happened, where it happened and most importantly is what action do we want the community to take,” says Michael Mulhare, the university’s assistant vice president for emergency management.
Longwood University, VCU and Virginia Tech use the LiveSafe app, allowing users to send anonymous tips to police, track friends as they walk home and have an instant connection to police with tracking location capabilities. “It is a good resource for walking around town at night,” McWilliams says. Students at Tech are also able to access resources through the app from the office of emergency management’s website that can remind them of specific procedures during emergencies.
Venuti notes their campus was one of the early adopters of the LiveSafe app, which has more than 22,000 subscribers on campus. “We get a lot of tips and information and feedback from members of our community using the LiveSafe app,” he says.
The William & Mary police department has a number of safety videos on their department website, including “When Lightning Strikes: Shots Fired on Campus,” which shows what to do in an active shooter situation. They also provide wallet cards for community members to carry with them providing police contact information as well as instructions on the “Run, Hide, Fight” response to an active shooter.
“This police department is committed to our community not just being safe but feeling safe,” Cheesebro says. The agency often addresses issues that non-campus agencies might not, such as staying with a student until a flat tire is fixed or having an officer walk them to their destination. “We want (students) to not have that kind of anxiety (being out alone). We want them to be able to study, do their research, do their community service. That is really critical to us. Our mantra around this department is we do everything humanly possible to make that occur, to make them not only be safe, but feel safe. We make decisions based on that premise. It’s not just criminal activity. It’s all about making this community work.”
Most higher education facilities also offer blue light emergency phones scattered throughout campus in locations where students, staff or faculty have identified a concern. Many also offer social media and smart phone device alerts in the event of an emergency.
VCU uses a multi-portal system approach when it comes to notifying the campus of an emergency. “We really don’t rely on any one method of communication with the public,” Venuti says. “We use all methods. If you are in the basement of a building and you can’t hear outside, the sirens aren’t going to do a whole lot of good. If you are in the basement of a building and your cell signal is shoddy, maybe you are not going to get the text message. We use on screen alerts, alert boxes, mobile board messaging, we have hundreds of TV screens on campus for multi-portal emergency messaging.”
Each student at Longwood has their email address automatically placed into an email alert system. Parents can also sign up. “A lot of parents do take advantage of that opportunity,” McWilliams says. “…Parents are able to get those alerts and make sure their children are safe.”
Prevention
At Virginia Tech, they stress individual preparedness for their students. The university
does a lot of outreach to students and the community, offering first aid training and even a student police academy for those interested. There are also specific programs that ask the students to be responsible for each other, including the Be Hokie Ready program, which emphasizes how being prepared is a key part of the campus community, and No Hokie Left Behind, which encourages students to stay together as a group to avoid potentially dangerous situations.
“Safety, security and preparedness is what we try to present to the students and overall community at Virginia Tech,” explains Mulhare.
Throughout the school year, at Mary Washington, Hall will meet with different student groups to discuss safety. Last year, he started a “Talk with the Chief ” town forum-like event to give presentations and talk with people. He often gets asked to come to individual departments to discuss safety measures. “I get a lot of those calls after a
tragic event somewhere across the world or the nation,” he says. His talks remind staff of warning signs, trigger mechanisms that could escalate a situation and how to calm down an incident until law enforcement gets there. “(The talks) just reminds the community and reassures the community of what we do every day and the partnership that we have” to keep the campus safe, including training for emergency events.
Hall has been in law enforcement for nearly 35 years. He’s a proponent of community policing, which involves getting out in the community to talk with faculty, staff and students so they feel more at ease coming to him or his officers if there is an issue. “Reiterate to them that ‘Hey, a lot of things can be identified before it becomes catastrophic,’ but if you don’t have that relationship before something or during something has started, then you won’t get that information. The more engaged you are with your community and your community trusts you, the more sharing of information. Alot of times things can be intercepted before they become catastrophic. It is not normal for an 18 year old, 19 year old to walk into a school or into a building and murder people. Too many people saw that individual struggling. That’s where we need to get that student, when they first start feeling discomfort.”
One way for officers to interact with students is through the Adopt-A-Hall program, where personnel give crime prevention tips, personal security seminars and free Rape Aggression Defense classes offered twice a semester, featuring hands on self-defense tactics as well as instructional reminders about being aware of surroundings and taking precautions.
All UMW sworn officers are also certified in mental health intervention, so if a student is having an issue through medication mismanagement or a mental illness, officers can help—not so much from a law enforcement standpoint, but to get the individual the help that they need.
“We feel by getting officers involved in the resident halls, having talks, being on campus, when something does go wrong or when a student feels threatened (they think), ‘Hey, I know Officer Perry, I know Chief Hall, or I know Lt. Bill. I can talk to them,’” says Hall. “Building that relationship early on with our community and continue to grow with it makes things a whole lot easier so we can identify threats.”
Hall notes President Troy Paino and his staff are committed to campus safety. “I always tell the parents that if it ever gets to the point that I don’t feel they are doing what they say they are doing, I’ll leave,” he says. “But right now, coming from 25 years in outside law enforcement, it’s a totally different theater in which to work. Different mission, but the commitment (is there).”
