Fall 2007 -- Vol. 60, No. 4
President's View
Faculty and students returned to campus this fall to a spate of good news stories.
We had set records in the last fiscal year for private giving, research funding, alumni and IPTAY participation levels, and student applications. Clemson had also risen to 27th in the U.S. News rankings of the nation’s top public universities.
Soon, however, we faced a handful of incidents that reveal clearly why campus safety and security have been our paramount concerns in 2007. In short order, we had a series of three emailed bomb threats, all apparently part of a pattern of false alarms at more than a dozen universities. The second came on Labor Day, the morning of our nationally televised football opener against Florida State.
president's sketch
A few weeks later, a man was arrested for kidnapping and robbing a female student on Parkway Drive near the President’s Home. In September, there was a pre-trial hearing in the case of the man charged in the May 2006 murder of our student Tiffany Souers in her off-campus apartment.
Into this mix came the reports and recommendations of the review panels looking into the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007.
At Clemson, a complete review of our safety policies and procedures began the day of the Virginia Tech tragedy, and continued throughout the summer. By fall, we had taken several steps recommended in the Virginia report, and others are in the works.
I’d like to use this column to update alumni, parents, students, faculty and staff on the changes we’ve made, and attempt to answer an unanswerable question: How safe is Clemson?
The first thing to remember is that Clemson is a small, friendly, relatively safe community. But, then, so is Blacksburg, Va.
Because Clemson College actually pre-dates the city, we evolved as both an educational institution and a municipality. We once provided all municipal services like power, water, and police and fire protection both on campus and off. (Our fire department still serves the entire Clemson community under an arrangement with the city.)
As a result, the University today has a professional police force and fire department with highly trained first responders, including EMS personnel. Our police force includes an investigative unit. Officers carry weapons, have arrest powers, and train in both campus and community policing.
Our officers are not simply “security guards.” Parents and grandparents can help us help our students understand this distinction. It’s an important one, especially if a student is arrested. It’s a real arrest.
Campus safety and security have been our paramont concerns in 2007.
We have a well-defined campus crisis-management team. It has responded ably to the off-campus murder of Tiffany Souers and other emergencies. Our professionals meet regularly with public safety officials in neighboring jurisdictions to make sure the lines of communication and cooperation are well established and functioning.
Many of our students live off campus in surrounding communities, and we host more than one million visitors to campus each year. This dialogue and cross-training are essential. Crisis planning and joint disaster exercises have long been held on a number of topics, ranging from nuclear emergencies and chemical spills to pandemic flu-preparedness drills.
A new student-led Safety Task Force began meeting regularly last year to discuss crime-related problems and issues and to help us reach students with safety information.
We learned two important lessons from the Virginia Tech tragedy. Swift, accurate communication is vitally important. And we need to share information and act when individuals pose a threat to themselves and to others.
In response, we added six new police officers this fall, along with the resources to support them. We are also:
strengthening an existing siren system for severe weather alerts. We’ll add towers and voice message capability for other types of warnings to some sirens.
expanding the E-911 system in conjunction with Pickens County. This will “go live” in January 2008.
launching an electronic emergency notification system across several platforms. The system will send emails and “pop up” messages to computers and text messages to cell phones whose users have signed up for the service.
expanding the duties of designated security coordinators in each campus building. We’ll also provide additional training for those individuals.
We have hired outside consultants to help us with a campuswide risk assessment analysis. They’ll evaluate our policies and procedures along with such concrete measures as door-locking/card-access systems, emergency phone systems, closed-circuit TV systems and others.
Our response, however, must go beyond strengthening physical security.
The most troubling aspect of the Virginia Tech incident, for me, was the university’s failure to “connect the dots” about a troubled and violent student. Many individuals saw the warning signs — students, parents, teachers, RAs, counselors, even the police and the judicial system. Yet they felt legally and ethically constrained from sharing information in a way that could have helped the student and prevented other students from becoming his victims.
We now know that was a misinterpretation of federal privacy laws and guidelines. At Clemson, the Student Affairs division is developing a program called PROPP — Proactive Reporting of Potential Problems. The first phase is a care network to ensure that information is shared, when appropriate, among the various offices and departments that may pick up on trouble.
Much has changed since April 2007 for every college and university. Clemson received national recognition on ABC’s “World News Tonight” in September for all the positive things we have done in the last few months to implement the lessons learned from Virginia Tech and to improve on our safety performance.
I am reminded, though, of a best-selling book title some years ago: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Bad things also happen to good universities, and they will happen again at Clemson.
We live in a world where one angry or bored person, perhaps half a world away, can temporarily shut down parts of our campus with a single malicious email. We must take every threat seriously, and we do. But we must not let fear knock us off course or derail a student’s education.
We must be as proactive as possible to ward off danger but be prepared to act in a professional, caring way in response to it.
How safe is Clemson? As safe as we can make it, which will never be quite safe enough.
(For more on campus safety, go to www.clemson.edu/cusafety.)
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