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Report Says Virginia Tech's Slow Response to Shootings Violated Law

May 19, 2010 RSS Feed Print

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An Education Department report released on Wednesday says that Virginia Tech failed to comply with a federal law that requires quick alerts to students in the event of campus emergencies. The document claimed the school responded too slowly to the 2007 campus shootings that killed 32, the Washington Post reports. This preliminary report prompted a swift rebuttal by the school, saying that the federal investigation of the school's response to the shootings had factual and legal errors.

The report says that Virginia Tech violated the Clery Act, a statute that necessitates swift alerts when campus emergencies unfold. Virginia Tech failed to notify the campus community quickly enough after the shooting of two students in an on-campus dormitory, the report says. The shooter, a Virginia Tech student named Seung Hui Cho, shot and killed 30 others in a campus building about two hours later.

"Virginia Tech failed to issue adequate warnings in a timely manner in response to the tragic events of April 16, 2007," the federal officials write in the report. "There are two aspects to this violation. First, the warnings that were issued by the university were not prepared or disseminated in a manner to give clear and timely notice of the threat to the health and safety of campus community members. Secondly, Virginia Tech did not follow its own policy for the issuance of timely warnings as published in its annual campus security reports."

Virginia Tech released a 73-page objection to the investigation's findings, the Post reports.

"Virginia Tech professionals acted appropriately in their response to the tragic events ... based on the best information then available to them," Michael Mulhare, the university's director of emergency management, writes in the rebuttal.

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Tags:: Virginia Tech,; colleges,; school shootings

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The SERAPH Research Team, consisting of education and law enforcement experts, has discovered five reasons for unsafe college campuses.
The SERAPH Research Team provides a bi-yearly school-safety report for Congress and in 2006 prepared an assessment of the “The Virginia Tech Review Panel Report”.
In its analysis of security concerns at colleges and universities across the country, SERAPH has determined:
1. Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, police departments across the United States have been training in “active shooter” response. This has been a well-established practice for use in public [K-12] schools.
However, our survey of college and university security directors and police chiefs shows that few have had this training. Two reasons were given: Administrators often do not want to pay for the training or in some cases bar campus security/police from participating in training to avoid what they perceived to be a "militaristic campus atmosphere”.
2. College administrators have no training in security or police operations and as a result micromanage security operations on their campuses. This is problematic because of the obvious delay it causes in response time. In addition, when a college or university has a police department, administrative micromanagement can violate state law regarding obstruction of justice.
3. A proper security audit is vitally important to campus security. However, our survey of security directors / police chiefs indicates that most college administrators will not allow these assessments to be done out of fear of liability exposure and the chance the audit would require changes in management systems.
4. Threat assessment as a science has existed in the United States since the early 1940s. Predication and prevention of violence is a critical aspect of campus security and one that, in SERAPH’s experience, seriously is lacking on higher-education campuses. All Resident Assistants, security / police and department administrators should be trained to identify violent behavior in students, staff and visitors.
A lack of systematic monitoring of people on campus contributes to crime.
5. An emergency plan is only as good as the data in it and the ability of key personnel to use it effectively.
Training is important for the effective management of an emergency by key personnel. You cannot ask untrained people to do what trained people do.
SERAPH http://www.scribd.com/doc/14386009/ANALYSIS-OF-VA-TECH-REPORT-TEAM-CALLS-FOR-CRIMINAL-CHARGES-AGAINST-UNIVERSITY-ADMINISTRATORS

Laura Collins of PA 8:30AM May 22, 2010

Um, they're not talking about the rebuttal.. lolz.
The report is claiming that VT did not respond fast enough on the day of the emergency, and on that, I haven't really an opinion. I mean, I heard about it and still went to class--I assumed the emergency was over. Perhaps, knowing that he was on the loose would have been helpful; I don't remember if that information was made explicit. I'm not sure why he didn't get chased down after the first incident--where was everyone as these multiple gun shots went off? eh?

Anon of VA 3:52PM May 20, 2010

In beaurocratic government terms 5 months is a "swift rebuttle." consider the fact that it took the Dept. of Education three years to issue the report in the first place. I was a student at VT when the shooting happened and I am now getting my masters so I can work with students at universities and I can tell you that it would easily take 5 months for a 73 page response to be prepared and carefully reviewed by the people in charge. Obviously they knew that every word in the response would be analyzed so it's not the kind of thing you can turn out in a weekend. In addition, the administrators still had their regular jobs to do. VT had a really tough year financially last year and many administrators were already doing multiple jobs due to hiring freezes, so please don't make it seem like the delay was just because they were sitiing on their butts thinking about when the best time politically to release it would be.

Kate of VA 7:37AM May 20, 2010

Report Says Virginia Tech's Slow Response to Shootings Violated Law

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