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BEST PRACTICES FOR MAKING

COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MAY 15, 2007

Serial No. 110–36

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor

(

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Linda T. Sa ́nchez, California 

John P. Sarbanes, Maryland 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California, 

Ranking Minority Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

David Davis, Tennessee 

Timothy Walberg, Michigan 

Dean Heller, Nevada

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Vic Klatt, Minority Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on May 15, 2007 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of Members: 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck,’’ Senior Republican Member, Committee 

on Education and Labor ............................................................................... 3

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor ......... 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 2

Statement of Witnesses: 

Cornell, Dewey G., Ph.D., forensic clinical psychologist and professor 

of education, director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, Curry 

School of Education, University of Virginia ................................................ 20

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 22

Healy, Steven J., president, International Association of Campus Law 

Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) ...................................................... 7

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

Attachment: Accreditation Standards and Critical Incident Management ........................................................................................................ 12

Kennedy, Louanne, Ph.D., emeritus provost and vice president for academic affairs, Northridge, California State University System ................ 13

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 16

Walbert, Janet E., Ed.D., president, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, vice president for student affairs, Arcadia University ............................................................................................................ 25

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 27

(1)

BEST PRACTICES FOR MAKING

COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE 

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. George Miller [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Miller, Kildee, Payne, Andrews, Scott, 

Woolsey, Hinojosa, Tierney, Kucinich, Holt, Davis of California, 

Davis of Illinois, Bishop of New York, Sestak, Loebsack, Altmire, 

Yarmuth, Hare, Clarke, Courtney, McKeon, Petri, Keller, Wilson, 

Kline, Boustany, Foxx, Kuhl, Davis of Tennessee, Walberg and 

Heller. 

Staff Present: Tylease Alli, Hearing Clerk; Denise Forte, Director 

of Education Policy; Gabriella Gomez, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Lloyd Horwich, Policy Advisor for Subcommittee on Early 

Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education; Lamont Ivey, 

Staff Assistant, Education; Stephanie Moore, General Counsel; Joe 

Novotny, Chief Clerk; Lisette Partelow, Staff Assistant, Education; 

Rachel Racusen, Deputy Communications Director; Julie 

Radocchia, Education Policy Advisor; Michele Varnhagen, Labor 

Policy Director; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; Robert Borden, 

Minority General Counsel; Kathryn Bruns, Minority Legislative Assistant; Amy Jones, Minority Professional Staff Member; Victor 

Klatt, Minority Staff Director; Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/

Assistant to the General Counsel; and Sally Stroup, Minority Deputy Staff Director. 

Chairman MILLER. The Committee on Education and Labor will 

come to order. I want to welcome everyone this morning to today’s 

hearing on the best practices for making college campuses safe. 

Nearly a month has passed since the horrific violence of Virginia 

Tech, by far the worst campus attack on our Nation’s history. It is 

extremely difficult to make sense of a tragedy like this, and the unanswered questions about the events that unfolded that day will 

undoubtedly persist for a long time. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine 

has provided tremendous leadership for the Virginia Tech community and for his State during this painful and difficult time. The 

work of his Commission will address the ongoing questions about 

the tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus. We will look to the Commission’s work for guidance when it releases its recommendations. 

2

The purpose of our hearing today is to learn from campus safety 

advocates and school administrators about how the Congress can 

help colleges and universities across the country to prevent and recover from tragedies. On an emergency preparedness front, we are 

particularly interested in learning about emergency communications systems that use the latest technologies. Many campuses use 

broadcast e-mails and text-messaging systems that have proven to 

be effective in alerting students and staff to emergency situations. 

Communication, as we have learned, must include ways in which 

parents and loved ones can receive updates and information about 

students and staff on campus. The overall safety and emergency 

preparedness plan is just part of the equation. 

Detecting and preventing threats on the campus communities are 

another part of the equation. Comprehensive mental health counseling and intervention services can be incorporated into the daily 

student life on campuses to help prevent the individuals from acting on their emotions in a negative way. As we will hear today, 

having the appropriate personnel for every day of prevention services as well for the tragedies brings us closer to ensuring a safer 

learning and working environment on campus. 

As we examine the state of campuses today, we must also look 

at some of the more common and pervasive threats to students—

alcohol abuse and sexual assault. According to the National Center 

on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, in 

2001, more than 1,700 deaths on campuses were caused by alcoholrelated injuries. 97,000 students were victims of alcohol-related 

rape and sexual assaults, and 696,000 students were assaulted by 

other students who had been drinking heavily. The Federal statistics show that, in 2006, there were more than 2,600 rapes reported 

by the students, a figure that still may not show us the full picture 

of the sexual assault trend, especially with these low reporting 

rates. 

Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of our 

children, our students and our loved ones. As the Virginia Tech 

community continues to recover and heal from last month’s tragedy, the best service that we can provide to the students and faculty and the staff members of colleges and universities across the 

country is to first listen and learn. Then we must decide what additional role the Federal Government, if any, can play in better preparing the campuses to be safe. 

We look forward to the testimony of our panel of witnesses, and 

I would now like to recognize the senior Republican of our committee, Mr. McKeon from California. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Chairman, Committee on 

Education and Labor 

Welcome to today’s hearing on ‘‘Best Practices for Making College Campuses 

Safe.’’

Nearly a month has passed since the horrific violence at Virginia Tech—by far 

the worst campus attack in our nation’s history. It is extremely difficult to make 

sense of a tragedy like this, and unanswered questions about the events that unfolded that day will undoubtedly persist for a long time. 

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has provided tremendous leadership for the Virginia 

Tech community and for his state during this painful and difficult time. The work 

3

of his commission will address the ongoing questions about the tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus. 

We will look to the commission’s work for guidance when it releases its recommendations. 

The purpose of our hearing today is to learn from campus safety advocates and 

school administrators about how the Congress can help colleges and universities 

across the country to prevent and recover from tragedies. 

On the emergency preparedness front, we are particularly interested in learning 

about emergency communications systems that use the latest technologies. 

Many campuses use broadcast emails and text-messaging systems that have proven to be effective in alerting students and staff of emergency situations. 

Communications, as we have learned, must include a way for parents or other 

loved ones to receive updates and information about students or staff on campus. 

The overall safety and emergency preparedness plan is just one part of the equation. Detecting and preventing threats on a campus community is the other part of 

the equation. 

Comprehensive mental health counseling and intervention services can be incorporated into daily student life on campuses, to help prevent individuals from acting 

on their emotions in a negative way. 

As we examine the state of safety on campuses today, we must also look at some 

of the more common—and pervasive—threats to students: alcohol abuse and sexual 

assault. 

According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia 

University, in 2001, more than 1,700 deaths on campuses were caused by alcohol 

related injuries; 97,000 students were victims of alcohol-related rape or sexual assaults; and 696,000 students were assaulted by another student who had been 

drinking heavily. And federal statistics show that in 2006, there were more than 

2,600 rapes reported by students—a figure that still may not show us the full picture given that sexual assaults tend to have especially low reporting rates. 

Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of our children, our students, and our loved ones. 

As the Virginia Tech community continues to recover and heal from last month’s 

tragedy, the best service we can provide to the students and faculty and staff members of colleges and universities across this country is to first listen and learn. Then 

we must decide what additional role the federal government can play in better preparing campuses to be safe. 

We look forward to the testimony by our panel of witnesses. 

I now recognize the committee’s Senior Republican, Mr. McKeon, for his opening 

remarks. 

Thank you. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening today’s 

hearing. 

It has been nearly a month since the deadliest shooting in modern American history and, without a doubt, our Nation’s most unthinkable instance in campus violence. Families across the country 

and the Virginia Tech community continue to grieve, and we always will, but in the aftermath of that dark April day, our challenge is to learn not only more about what occurred in Blacksburg 

but also what we can do to ensure that college campuses are wellequipped to handle tragedies such as this. 

A response to an event of this magnitude, as all of us would suspect, has been as swift as it has been broad. Local, State and Federal law enforcement immediately engaged both for the purposes of 

ensuring safety, but also to investigate the sordid details of this 

sad case. Virginia’s governor has assembled a panel of experts to 

review every conceivable aspect of the campus shooting, and colleges and universities have begun to look inward, reexamining 

their own emergency response plans. 

Today, this committee has the opportunity to contribute to the 

national dialogue on the safety of our college campuses as well, and 

4

I thank our witnesses for joining us this morning to help us to do 

just that. 

At the outset, I believe it is important to note that this is not 

a Republican or a Democrat issue. Rather, this is an issue in which 

we all share feelings of anger, sorrow and, yes, responsibility, not 

responsibility for what occurred in Blacksburg on April 16th—the 

responsibility for that day’s events lies squarely with a single gunman, who acted selfishly, brutally and without regard for human 

life—but responsibility to join with other stakeholders to trigger a 

national discussion on how to improve response efforts for the next 

time an emergency situation occurs on a college campus. 

The goal of today’s hearing is straightforward, to listen and to 

learn. As we organized our panel of witnesses and our agenda, we 

made certain that our objective was not to advocate or to dismiss 

a particular policy change or a piece of legislation. Rather, we have 

assembled four men and women who can share their unique perspectives on how to deal with unexpected tragedies on college campuses. For example, I will be eager to hear their thoughts on ways 

various departments within institutions have coordinated an immediate response to an on-campus incident. 

What are campuses doing with regard to emergency notification 

systems? What research is being done in the area of threat assessments, and how have various campuses dealt with unexpected tragedies? 

In short, we are here to discuss with our panel the question of 

whether there are certain standards or best practices that could be 

followed for bolstering security and emergency notification on campus. Because a campus security office can take many forms and because campuses can vary from small, one-building colleges to colleges that sprawl several acres, to colleges that are in the middle 

of a bustling city, trying to develop suggestions for standards that 

will fit all different types of campuses is difficult. However, it is the 

responsibility of all stakeholders to take on this challenge, and this 

committee is no exception. 

Mr. Chairman, with that in mind, I will look forward to our witnesses’ testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, Senior Republican 

Member, Committee on Education and Labor 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening today’s hearing. 

It’s been nearly a month since the deadliest shooting in modern American history 

and, without a doubt, our nation’s most unthinkable instance of campus violence. 

Families across the country and the Virginia Tech community continue to grieve, 

and we always will. But in the aftermath of that dark April day, our challenge is 

to learn not only more about what occurred in Blacksburg, but also what we can 

do to ensure college campuses are well-equipped to handle tragedies such as this. 

The response to an event of this magnitude, as all of us would suspect, has been 

as swift as it has been broad. Local, state, and federal law enforcement immediately 

engaged—both for the purposes of ensuring safety, but also to investigate the sordid 

details of this sad case. Virginia’s Governor has assembled a panel of experts to review every conceivable aspect of the campus shooting. And colleges and universities 

have begun to look inward, re-examining their own emergency response plans. 

Today, this Committee has the opportunity to contribute to the national dialogue 

on the safety of our college campuses as well, and I thank our witnesses for joining 

us this morning to help us do just that. At the outset, I believe it’s important to 

note that this is not a ‘‘Republican’’ or ‘‘Democrat’’ issue. Rather, this is an issue 

in which we all share feelings of anger, sorrow, and—yes—responsibility. Not reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
5

sponsibility for what occurred in Blacksburg on April 16th, as the responsibility for 

that day’s events lies squarely with a single gunman, who acted selfishly, brutally, 

and without regard for human life—but responsibility to join with other stakeholders to trigger a national discussion on how to improve response efforts for the 

next time an emergency situation occurs on a college campus. 

The goal of today’s hearing is straightforward: to listen and to learn. As we organized our panel of witnesses and our agenda, we made certain that our objective 

was not to advocate or dismiss a particular policy change or piece of legislation. 

Rather, we have assembled four men and women who can share their unique perspectives on how to deal with unexpected tragedies on college campuses. For example, I’ll be eager to hear their thoughts on ways various departments within institutions have coordinated in immediate response to an on-campus incident; what campuses are doing with regard to emergency notification systems; what research is 

being done in the area of threat assessments; and how various campuses have dealt 

with unexpected tragedies. 

In short, we’re here to discuss with our panel the question of whether there are 

certain standards—or ‘‘best practices ‘‘—that could be followed for bolstering security and emergency notification on campus. Because a campus security office can 

take many forms and because campuses can vary from small, one-building colleges, 

to colleges that sprawl several acres, to colleges that are in the middle of a bustling 

city, trying to develop suggestions for standards that will fit all different types of 

campuses is difficult. However, it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to take on 

this challenge—and this Committee is no exception. 

Mr. Chairman, with that in mind, I look forward to our witnesses’ testimony. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

I want to welcome all of the members of the panel. Thank you 

for agreeing to give us your time and the benefits of your experience and your knowledge. 

I would like to turn to Mr. Scott for the purpose of introducing 

Dr. Dewey Cornell. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for allowing me to introduce Dr. Cornell from the University of Virginia’s 

Curry School of Education. I have worked closely with Dr. Cornell 

on many issues over the years, and I am pleased to see him testifying here today. 

His testimony in this hearing is, unfortunately, relevant today in 

the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16th. Virginia 

Tech held its commencement ceremony this past weekend, and although the physical and emotional scars from this horrific day will 

continue to affect students and faculty for a long time to come, I 

am hopeful that this is the first step in restoring a sense of normalcy and healing to the campus. 

Dr. Cornell is a forensic clinical psychologist and a professor of 

education at the Curry School. He is also a director of the Virginia 

Youth Violence Project and a faculty associate at the Institute of 

Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. He has 24 years of experience 

in evaluating juvenile and adult offenders, including in the area of 

school shootings. He has testified in legal proceedings, has consulted with the FBI and has authored over 100 publications in psychology and education on these matters. 

From his work, Dr. Cornell has developed threat assessment 

guidelines that are being used throughout Virginia as well as in 

other States, and these guidelines are meant to assess the actual 

threat of incidences in schools in order to help schools evaluate the 

severity of threats and respond in a targeted and appropriate manner. 

He is widely respected in his field, and I would like to thank him 

for traveling here today to provide testimony about his work on 

6

school violence, and I look forward to hearing his recommendations, 

and again, I thank Dr. Cornell. 

I thank you, Chairman Miller, for the opportunity to introduce 

him today. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Now, for the purposes of introducing Dr. Luanne Kennedy, we 

have Mr. McKeon. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Luanne Kennedy served as Provost and Vice President of 

Academic Affairs at California State University Northridge from 

1993 until 2003. As Provost and Vice President, she was the primary advisor to the president on all matters affecting academic 

programming and was responsible for the campus in the absence 

of the president. 

When an earthquake struck Northridge, California in January 

1994, Dr. Kennedy, the only senior administrator on campus that 

weekend, guided the university through the early hours of the disaster. The earthquake was only the second to strike directly beneath an urban area since 1933, and it produced the strongest 

ground motions ever instrumentally recorded in North America. In 

those initial days, Dr. Kennedy accurately estimated the number of 

emergency trailers needed to house the campus. She was a forceful 

leader on campus in the weeks and months that followed. That is 

when I first met her, and it was a wonderful experience to see the 

inspirational leadership that she provided at that time. 

Before joining CSU Northridge, Dr. Kennedy served as Associate 

Provost at Baruch College in the City University of New York system and as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kean University 

of New Jersey. She also has served on numerous community organizations and boards, including the regional and corporate boards 

of the United Way of Los Angeles. 

Mr. Chairman, it is my privilege to welcome Dr. Kennedy this 

morning, and I look forward to hearing her perspective on campus 

safety and emergency preparedness. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

I have the honor of introducing Dr. Jan Walbert. Dr. Walbert has 

served on various senior student affairs positions at Arcadia University for 18 years. Currently, Dr. Walbert is the Vice President 

of Student Affairs as well as President of the National Association 

for Student Personnel Administrators, the umbrella organization 

for Student Affairs Administrators, representing over 11,000 members at 1,400 campuses. NASPA members serve in a variety of 

functions and roles, including the Vice President and Dean for Student Life as well as professionals, working with housing and residence life, student unions, student activities, counseling, career development, orientation, enrollment management, racial and ethnic 

minority support services, and retention and assessment. 

Thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to your 

testimony. That is a pretty hefty portfolio there. 

Congressman Holt wanted to be here to introduce Chief Steven 

Healy, but he has been detained. So, if I might, I will go ahead and 

just introduce Chief Healy to the committee. 

Chief Healy currently serves as Director of Public Safety at 

Princeton University. He is also the President of the International 

7

Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, and it is 

in that capacity that Chief Healy will be testifying before us today. 

Previously, Chief Healy testified before the Homeland Security and 

Governmental Affairs Committee in April of this year. 

Welcome to the committee. I think, Chief, we are going to start 

with you. 

The lighting system in the committee is such that when you start 

testifying, the green light will go on, and then, hopefully, an orange 

light will go on and warn you that you have about a minute to 

wrap it up, and then the red light means that you will be out of 

time, but we do allow you to finish a coherent sentence and finish 

a thought and all of the rest of that. So be comfortable in testifying 

in the manner that you are most comfortable doing so. 

STATEMENT OF STEVEN HEALY, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL 

ASSOCIATION OF CAMPUS LAW ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATORS, AND DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. I appreciate that. 

Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, members of the 

committee, my name is Steven Healy, and I am the Director of 

Public Safety at Princeton University and am the President of the 

International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. IACLEA represents the campus public safety executives at 

1,100 institutions of higher education and over 1,800 individual 

members. 

The tragic events at Virginia Tech nearly 1 month ago today 

heightened the importance of our continuous efforts to enhance 

campus public safety and to protect students, faculty, staff, and 

visitors to our campus. I thank and commend the committee for 

having this very important hearing. 

This morning, I want to address several issues related to campus 

public safety best practices, including mass communication systems 

and other efforts that we have underway to strengthen communications, initiatives to continually raise the level of professionalism 

within the campus public safety community, and ongoing efforts to 

meet Federal crime reporting guidelines. 

First, I want to assure this committee and the American people 

that vigorous efforts are underway to enhance safety and security 

on our Nation’s campuses. With our partners such as the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, College and University 

Policing Section and several Federal agencies, we are committed to 

protecting our campuses and maintaining the open environment 

that is essential to the higher education experience. 

As you know, campuses are not immune from threats. We deal 

with a number of health and safety risks, including high-risk 

drinking, drug abuse, mental illness, suicide, and various forms of 

violence against women, including sexual assault. Campus public 

safety officers are on the front lines, along with many other campus 

administrators, preventing, intervening and responding to these 

situations. While there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, ensuring 

that campus public safety agencies meet high professional standards contributes to effective prevention and response. 

8

IACLEA recognizes that adherence to the highest professional 

standards is crucial to our effectiveness. Thanks to the Justice Department Office of Community-oriented Policing Services, IACLEA 

has established an accreditation program based on standards written by the Commission on Accreditation For Law Enforcement 

Agencies. Our program requires participating agencies to conduct 

an in-depth self-assessment and then to meet over 225 standards, 

many of which are specific to the campus environment. Accreditation sets a strong foundation as agencies plan for other important 

aspects of campus safety, such as communications, which must be 

dealt with in a holistic manner. 

First, we must communicate within our communities during critical incidents to provide detailed instructions, control rumors and 

maintain order. Second, we must also ensure effective communications between all first responders. Effective emergency notification 

systems must have the appropriate capacity, security, redundancy, 

and reliability to reach the community in multiple modes. These 

systems must use voice messages, text messages, e-mails in addition to other systems such as sirens and horns. No one method is 

sufficient. We must combine all of these methods to ensure that we 

reach the community. Effective communication and interoperability 

between first responders is also paramount, and IACLEA has received significant funding from the Department of Homeland Security to enhance those responses. 

In addition to ongoing challenges, colleges and universities must 

also comply with the Federal Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, also known as the Clery Act. The Clery Act impacts many areas of campus operations, so it is important for campuses to take a collaborative approach to compliance. To further 

this collaborative model, IACLEA has joined with Security on Campus, an organization that works to improve campus safety to offer 

a series of Clery Act training sessions around the country. While 

many of these efforts have enhanced campus public safety, it is important that we all recognize that there is much more to do, and 

I offer the following recommendations. 

First is the need for a National Center For Campus Public Safety. The need for a National Center For Campus Public Safety was 

a consensus recommendation from a Justice Department-sponsored 

summit held in 2004. The National Center would support research, 

information-sharing, best in model practices, and strategic planning to enhance safety and security. 

In conclusion, IACLEA has worked for the past 49 years to advance campus public safety and to support the more than 30,000 

campus public safety officers serving our colleges and universities. 

We firmly believe that campus public safety is a shared responsibility that requires efforts from us all. Thank you for your commitment to this important issue. Your continued support is vital to our 

success and to our ability to maintain our campuses as safe places. 

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this important dialogue, and I look forward to your questions. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Healy follows:]

9

Prepared Statement of Steven J. Healy, President, International 

Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) 

Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, Members of the Committee. My 

name is Steven Healy and I am the director of public safety at Princeton University. 

I am also the President of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA), an association that represents the campus public 

safety executives at 1,100 institutions of higher education and over 1,800 individual 

members. 

The tragic events at Virginia Tech nearly one month ago have heightened the importance of our continuous efforts to enhance campus public safety at more than 

4,000 institutions of higher education serving nearly 16 million students and millions more faculty, staff and visitors. I thank and commend the Committee for holding this important hearing on campus safety best practices. 

I want to address several issues related to campus public safety best practices, 

including on-going efforts to strengthen communications, initiatives to continually 

raise the level of professionalism within the campus public safety community and 

efforts to comply with federal crime reporting requirements. 

Before I outline these strategies, I want to assure this Committee and the American people that vigorous efforts have been and continue to be underway to enhance 

safety and security on our nation’s campuses. With our partners, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, College and University Policing Section 

(IACP) and several federal agencies, we are continuously vigilant and committed to 

protecting our students and other community members while simultaneously maintaining the open environment that is the centerpiece of the American higher education experience. 

It’s important to understand the complex nature of our communities and the 

evolving responsibilities of campus public safety. 

Campuses are not immune from safety threats and other dangers facing our society. We must be realistic about these threats and act proactively to prevent and respond to the inevitable crises and incidents that will arise. Campuses deal with a 

number of critical challenges today, including problems with high risk drinking, 

drug abuse, mental illness, including suicide, and various forms of violence against 

women, including sexual assault. Campus public safety officers are on the front 

lines, along with other campus administrators, as first responders to many of these 

situations. As we work to develop comprehensive, coordinated approaches to these, 

and other problems, there is a growing convergence among fields about the best way 

to prepare for and address complex health and safety issues on college campuses. 

Rather than recommending one-size-fits-all solutions, both alcohol, other drug and 

violence (AODV) prevention programs on the one hand, and crisis planning models 

on the other, emphasize the need for creating comprehensive plans that are tailored 

to the culture, setting, and physical environment of each campus. 

Essential steps in creating these plans include: 

• Working in partnerships with multiple campus and community stakeholders; 

• Conducting an analysis of local problems, hazards, structures, assets, and resources; and, 

• Consulting the research literature for and creating evidence-based practices. 

One way to ensure our colleges and universities are able to prevent, prepare for, 

respond to, and recover from critical incidents is by providing adequate resources 

for our campus public safety agencies. These resources must include, as a foundation, the best possible training available and support for adherence to the highest 

professional standards. 

Accreditation 

IACLEA recognizes that training and professional standards are crucial to our 

success in crime prevention and control and critical incident response. Several years 

ago, we embarked upon a process to establish an accreditation program for campus 

public safety agencies. 

Thanks to our partners in the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community 

Oriented Policing Services (COPS), IACLEA was provided seed monies to begin developing this program. Based on the standards previously established by the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), we now have a 

program that supports our commitment to the professionalization of campus public 

safety. 

Our Accreditation program requires participating agencies to conduct an in-depth 

self-assessment of their policies and procedures and then take significant steps to 

meet more than 150 campus-specific standards. Some of those standards specifically 

address critical incident response and we believe that the Accreditation process, in 

10

and of itself, enhances an agency’s response to all-hazards (see attached article). 

IACLEA began accepting applications for the program last year and we are confident that many colleges and universities will support their campus public safety 

agencies seeking Accreditation. 

Accreditation sets a strong foundation so agencies are able to plan for other important aspects of campus safety such as communications. Communicating for effective campus public safety involves several inter-connecting spheres of communication and must be approached in a holistic manner. 

Communications 

First and foremost, we must communicate within our campus communities immediately following the discovery of a critical incident so we are able to provide detailed instructions, maintain order, and control rumors. Secondly, we must communicate with those responsible for managing and resolving a critical incident: the 

emergency first responders. For the former, our strategy must consider the unique 

characteristics of campuses and the fact that we are open, vibrant, active communities, with people always on the move, engaging in academic, social and other activities. 

Of particular interest is the need for mass, emergency notification systems that 

have appropriate capacity, security, redundancy and reliance to reach our community members using multiple forms of communication that do not allow for a single 

point of failure. These systems must be able to reach community members with 

voice messages, text messages and emails, in addition to other systems that may 

already be in place, such as web sites, horns, or sirens. No single method of communication is sufficient. 

Secondly, we must communicate effectively with our emergency response partners. This type of communication requires interoperability—that is, equipment, protocols and governance structures that allow agencies to speak to each other in real 

time. Funding provided by Congress through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice aims to enhance interoperability at several levels, yet colleges and universities are not explicitly mentioned as potential 

grant recipients for this funding. Specifically including campus public safety agencies in existing federal and state programs of emergency preparedness and law enforcement response would address the varying capabilities of campuses to talk to 

their counterparts in the larger community during critical incidents. 

While interoperable equipment is important, so is the need to have established 

systems, protocols, agreements, and joint training programs that enable multiple 

agencies to respond in a rapid, effective, seamless fashion. With the support of a 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant, IACLEA created a ‘‘Guide to 

Strengthening Communications between Campus Public Safety Departments and 

Federal-State-Local Emergency Response Agencies’’. This Guide recommends that 

campuses do the following: 

• Assess local responsibilities and resources available; 

• Determine the state of local emergency communications equipment and training 

and make recommendations for improvements; 

• Develop and maintain a written Emergency Communication Plan that is consistent with federal NIMS/ICS requirements; 

• Develop mutual aid agreements and/or memoranda of understanding in cooperation with local law enforcement and other emergency response agencies; 

• Train and conduct exercises to validate, enhance, or improve all procedures resulting from developed mutual aid agreements; and, 

• Develop and improve communications skills and networks. 

To support these goals, IACLEA, with funding from DHS, developed a critical incident management course that involves simulation based training. In its first year 

of operation, the program has trained more than 700 campus public safety officers 

and their emergency response partners. 

In addition to the on-going challenges of crime prevention, crime control, and critical incident response, colleges and universities must ensure they comply with Federal crime reporting requirements, specifically, the Crime Awareness and Campus 

Security Act of 1990, known as the Clery Act. 

Clery Act Compliance 

The Act requires colleges and universities that receive federal Title IV funding to 

disclose campus crime statistics and crime prevention information to the public and 

the Federal government. IACLEA has served as a resource to the U.S. Department 

of Education by providing feedback on changes to the Clery Act and training for our 

members. IACLEA has co-sponsored a number of Clery Act training and compliance 

11

workshops and seminars at our Annual Conference, Regional Conferences and other 

venues. 

The Jeanne Clery Act impacts many areas of campus operations and administration; therefore, it is important for colleges and universities to take a collaborative 

approach to compliance. To further the collaborative model, this year, Security on 

Campus, an organization devoted to improving campus safety, teamed with IACLEA 

and the IACP under grant funding from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, to offer a series of Clery Act compliance training sessions across the U.S. 

IACLEA is providing subject matter expert instructors for these courses. 

The Clery Act provides students and their families with accurate, complete and 

timely information about safety on campus, so they can make informed decisions 

about their safety and security. Our job as the professional association representing 

campus public safety is to provide our members with the latest training and guidance so they can deliver this information to students, parents and the Federal government. IACLEA is committed to working with our members and with other interested groups to promote Clery Act compliance and training in the future. 

IACLEA believes that a current proposal to expand the Clery Act to include additional reporting requirements under a broad definition of ‘‘campus law enforcement 

emergencies,’’ while well intended, is far too subjective and contains a number of 

problematic requirements. We have submitted alternative language for this bill and 

stand ready to assist the U.S. Congress in enhancing campus public safety. 

Summary 

Providing adequate safety and security for our nation’s campuses is a critical responsibility that requires action by all of us. Campuses are diverse settings, and 

there is no one-size-fits-all initiative that will work at every institution. Each campus must undertake a comprehensive planning process involving multiple campus 

and community constituencies, working together to analyze their local problems and 

assets and developing plans that use multiple, coordinated policies, protocols, and 

programs. IACLEA has developed several resources that can significantly contribute 

to these efforts, but we can do more with additional support from the Federal government. 

While these existing efforts by IACLEA and other professional associations and 

our partners in the Federal government lay important groundwork, they should be 

supplemented to ensure they are: 

• Expanded to all campuses; 

• Include more partners on campus, as well as local and state partners; 

• Supported with funding for appropriate equipment and other infrastructure development; 

• Informed by training, technical assistance, and up-to-date information; and, 

• Practiced regularly on all campuses. 

Recommendations 

While IACLEA currently reaches nearly half the traditional higher education institutions, we need to ensure all colleges and universities are committed to and have 

access to high quality information, best practices, and training. Greater Federal, 

state and local support for campus public safety agencies—both at public or private 

institutions—would provide additional opportunities. 

First among my recommendations is the need to establish a National Center for 

Campus Public Safety. The need for a National Center was a consensus recommendation from a Summit held in 2004. The National Center would support research, information sharing, best and model practices, and strategic planning to enhance campus public safety. 

For example, in the aftermath of the horrific events at Virginia Tech on April 16, 

many campuses began examining mass notification systems. Unfortunately, there 

was little information available to help guide those decisions. A National Center 

would fill that gap by brokering innovative, forward-looking research for campus 

public safety needs. The National Center would also aggressively promote the adoption of professional standards, like those in the IACLEA Accreditation Program. The 

Center would be an invaluable resource for all who have a stake in campus public 

safety and thus the success of our colleges and universities. 

Secondly, we are working with our partners in the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, 

and the Department of Education to expand previous studies of middle and high 

school aged shooters, to take a deliberate, campus-focused look at rampage shooting 

incidents at colleges and universities. This examination and the lessons learned 

from it will surely result in the identification of best practices. I would like to thank 

the FBI Office of Law Enforcement Coordination for facilitating this important initiative. 

12

Finally, IACLEA will work with the national associations of higher education and 

other partners to adopt a four-point risk management strategy that we believe may 

help us prevent future tragedies: 

• Aggressively promote the use of IACLEA’s Threat & Risk Assessment tool, developed with federal DHS grant support, to help campuses identify and prioritize 

vulnerabilities tied to known and potential threats. For this, IACLEA will need additional resources from DHS beyond what our current grant allows. 

• Collaborate with others to create behavioral threat assessment models. These 

models should be centered on multi-disciplinary teams, comprised of student affairs 

professionals, counselors and psychologists, substance abuse professionals, and campus public safety administrators working together. 

• Fast track our efforts to develop a comprehensive tool to assist campuses in 

evaluating their physical security environments. This tool will help campuses make 

sound decisions about security technology and mass notification systems. 

• Ensure that rapid response training is available to campuses that need it. The 

Bureau of Justice Assistance has pledged their help in this important endeavor. 

We believe this four-point approach addresses potential gaps that may exist on 

some campuses and establishes a framework to systematically address other safety 

and security challenges on our campuses. 

Conclusion 

For the past 49 years, IACLEA has worked to advance campus public safety. We 

understand the vital role our colleges and universities play in ensuring democracy 

throughout the world. We will continue to be an advocate for the more than 30,000 

public safety officers serving over 4,000 unique communities. Advancing campus 

public safety is a shared responsibility and requires efforts from all of us. We must 

all work to ensure we eliminate the fragmentation and isolation of campus safety 

initiatives and adopt only those activities that are founded in evidence-based best 

practices. 

Thank you for your commitment to this important issue. I would also like to 

thank DHS, the FBI, the Justice Department and the Department of Education for 

their support, along with the many state and local agencies, who are our partners. 

These partnerships are vital to fulfilling our promise to ensure that every campus 

community remains safe and open. 

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this important and ongoing dialogue. 

Attachment

ACCREDITATION STANDARDS AND CRITICAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

Recent occurrences in the United States and Canada have underscored the potential for catastrophic events on college and university campuses. Whether man-made, 

natural or technological in nature, catastrophic events present unique challenges to 

those responsible for the well-being of students, faculty, staff and visitors. Events 

such as Hurricane Katrina, in the fall of 2005, illustrate the potential for catastrophes to reach far beyond geopolitical boundaries and render great swaths of infrastructure inoperable. The tragic shootings at Dawson College in Montreal and 

more recently, at Virginia Tech, demonstrate the sudden, unpredictable, and devastating nature of some criminal acts. These events point out the need for seamless 

emergency operations procedures at institutional, municipal, regional, state, and national levels. Effective, large-scale emergency operations can only occur after careful 

consideration and planning have taken place at each level. 

IACLEA’s efforts to launch an accreditation program began in 1999. IACLEA conducted a member needs assessment survey, which identified the development of a 

campus public safety agency accreditation process as a priority. The Association created an Accreditation Committee in 2001 and charged it with reviewing existing 

standards and developing an accreditation process. In 2003, IACLEA sought and 

was awarded a grant from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

(COPS) within the U. S. Department of Justice. These funds were designed to defray 

the start-up costs of creating and implementing the accreditation program. A second 

COPS grant was secured in 2005 to continue the support of the program through 

the pilot program phase. The IACLEA Accreditation Program was officially 

launched in February 2006. 

The Accreditation Committee, recently reformulated as a Commission, is the Association’s governing body for the IACLEA Accreditation Program. The Commission 

consists of twelve voluntary members, nine of which are IACLEA members. Particular care is taken to ensure that the Commission membership is representative 

of the diversity of the Association, including representatives of both two- and fouryear institutions, sworn and non-sworn agencies, and public and private instituVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
13

1 CALEA, Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies, 5th Edition, Fairfax, VA 

tions. Additional members are drawn from allied associations, including the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and the American Council on Education. 

An often cited benefit of the accreditation process is that the standards provide 

timely and topical guidance in the ‘‘best practices’’ of public safety management and 

operations. The standards address areas such as policy development, selection of 

personnel, training, discipline, use of force, patrol and traffic operations, communications, record keeping, property and evidence handling, transportation and detention of individuals, and emergency response planning. 

Generally, the standards identify ‘‘what’’ an agency must do, not ‘‘how’’ to do it. 

The majority of standards require a ‘‘written directive’’ as a proof of compliance to 

affirm the agency’s commitment to the standard. Generally, any document that is 

binding on agency personnel and serves to direct, guide, or govern their activities 

may be used to meet the written directive requirement. The following standard, addressing emergency response planning, requires a written plan: 

46.1.2 The agency has a written ‘‘All Hazard’’ plan for responding to critical incidents such as natural and man-made disasters, civil disturbances, mass arrests, 

bomb threats, hostage/barricaded person situations, acts of terrorism, and other unusual incidents. The plan will follow standard Incident Command System (ICS) protocols, which include functional provisions for: command, operations, planning, logistics, and finance/administration.1

Subsequent standards provide more specific direction concerning the development 

of a comprehensive and effective emergency operations plan. It is noted that the 

‘‘command function’’ should address issues such as establishing a command post, 

mobilizing personnel, preparing a staging area, requesting outside assistance, and 

maintaining media relations. The ‘‘operations function’’ should attend to establishing 

perimeters, conducting evacuations, controlling traffic, and providing on-scene security. The ‘‘planning function’’ should address preparing an incident action plan, collecting and disseminating intelligence, and planning for demobilization, while the 

‘‘logistics function’’ should concentrate on communications, transportation, medical 

support, and equipment and supplies. The standards also require the periodic inspection of the agency’s emergency response equipment to ensure its operational 

readiness. 

Not only does the IACLEA Accreditation Program promote the highest professional standards for campus law enforcement and protective services, but it is committed to enhancing critical incident management through the creation of a webbased Campus Preparedness Resource Center. Funded under a federal Department 

of Homeland Security grant, the goals of the web based Resource Center are to develop and disseminate resources to strengthen the capacity of campus public safety 

departments to plan for potential WMD/terrorist threats, to encourage participation 

in IACLEA’s Incident Command System training program, and to disseminate a 

strategic vision for campus public safety training. Among the online resources available to the members of the campus public safety profession is a ‘‘Model Campus 

Emergency Operations Plan Guidelines’’ resource, which offers a sample EOP, emergency support functions and incident specific appendices and other sample documents that may be edited and adapted for use at any institution. This guide can 

provide a framework to develop an effective and compliant ‘‘All Hazard’’ plan. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Kennedy. 

STATEMENT OF LOUANNE KENNEDY, FORMER PROVOST, 

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT NORTHRIDGE 

Ms. KENNEDY. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon and 

members of the committee, on behalf of the California State University, I want to thank you for inviting me to discuss campus 

emergency preparedness and response. I am going to focus on the 

events of the early days of the Northridge earthquake and also on 

the school’s recovery from the event and the changes that we made 

to emergency preparedness as a result of that event. First, I would 

just like to say a few words about the CSU. 

14

We are the largest and most diverse 4-year university system in 

the country with 23 campuses, about 417,000 students, and we 

range from the northern area of California to the south. We have 

awarded about 2 million degrees, and we are also very cost-effective. Our charges average about $3,200 a year. Cal State 

Northridge is a campus now of 30,000 students on 369 acres. 

On January 17th, 1994, the northwest area of Los Angeles, including our campus, was struck by a 6.7-magnitude earthquake. 

Damage to the area is estimated at around $40 billion. Our campus 

was located about a mile from the epicenter and incurred about 

$400 million in damages. The casualties from the quake were relatively minor given the hour of the day, 4:31 in the morning, and 

the fact that it was the Martin Luther King holiday and that the 

students were not on the campus. The earthquake resulted in damage to 107 of the 117 buildings. Seven of those buildings were totally destroyed. 

For almost a decade, the campus was engaged in teaching and 

learning activities while simultaneously managing the recovery. We 

built a temporary campus, coordinated the relocation of classes and 

offices and worked closely with Federal and State agencies and construction companies, and we opened 1 month later, scheduling 

5,000 classes in 400 trailers and 4 Mylark 10,000-square-foot 

domes. I would like to just talk for a minute about the first day. 

We had absolutely no information about what had happened to 

us beyond a radio station’s announcing that the earthquake was in 

Northridge. What we were able to see, though, was that the science 

buildings were in flames, that the structures had separated from 

their main cores. We had no phones, no food, no water, no sanitary 

facilities, and no safe structures. We had hundreds of people coming to the campus from the outlying areas because we were a place 

that people came to. Our first contact was with the emergency response unit of the CSU. This contact was by walkie-talkie. We also 

had one public phone that worked, and we were in search of quarters for quite some time. 

The two things we focused on were safety, to make sure that all 

of the buildings—that we had gone into all of the buildings to make 

sure no one was inside. This was a difficult task. Since the freeways were down, we had only one person from facilities, three public safety people, two people from student affairs, and myself, because we lived on campus. So I had just moved there from New 

York and was living in one of the dorms at the time of the earthquake. 

Our first task—once we had established safety and there were no 

students in the buildings and we had everyone on the fields in 

front of the public safety office, we then began to photograph the 

entire campus. To continue to work on safety, the chancellor’s office 

sent us staff from other campuses and made the decision that the 

first thing that had to happen was we had to have telephones established in order that anyone who would call the campus would 

reach a live person, and we produced a common form, telling them 

updates on a daily basis. We worked out of two army tents that 

had been provided for us. 

The biggest difficulty that came was that we were unfamiliar 

with the number of aftershocks that would occur. We built a crisis 

15

management team out of the individuals who were present. No 

matter what their titles or previous positions had been, if they 

could man the phones, if they could operate in any way, if they felt 

safe enough to go into buildings with public safety people, we sent 

them in. 

By the end of day 5, though, we determined that a temporary 

campus would have to be built because there were 3,000 aftershocks in those early weeks, and buildings that we would claim 

would be on line on day 1, on day 3, would be off or sometimes between 10:00 and 4:00. With anyone who came onto the campus, we 

held briefing meetings at 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. We also prepared online telephone reports from student affairs, academic affairs and administrative services so that our staff and students 

could reach—even if they called through the night, they would be 

able to reach some update for the day that would talk about opening. Our message was that we would open. We were not sure when, 

and we were not sure in what structures. As administrators, we 

also agreed that we would be the last to occupy permanent space 

and would not move out of our dorms and trailers until every student had classrooms and every faculty member had an office, and 

we kept that promise, and for the next 8 years, the president and 

all of the senior administrative officers worked out of these spaces. 

What I want to talk about now is what we learned from that. 

We did not have access to our emergency planning documents, 

obviously, on the morning of the earthquake, and I must admit, as 

the administrator in charge, it was sort of the last thing on my 

mind. I think, in the moments like this, you think about safety. 

You think about letting people know things, and you want water, 

toilets and other objects like that; food would have been helpful, 

too. We have now developed a detailed emergency operations plan 

that anticipates and does practice, mock events for different kinds 

of threats, both natural, earthquakes, fire, flooding, hazardous materials, landslides, windstorms, utility outages, and those that are 

caused by accidental or intentional acts—a national defense emergency, a terrorist attack, aircraft bombs. We have a special plan for 

the avian flu, acts of violence, a shooting attack or a disturbance 

by criminal or insane individuals. This plan is updated and reviewed annually, and the university regularly conducts training 

and exercises. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Kennedy, I would ask if you could wrap 

up your testimony. 

Ms. KENNEDY. Okay. Sure. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Ms. KENNEDY. We have a functioning emergency broadcast system on the main campus; we have redundancy in terms of the 

emergency operations plans; we have a mobile unit and several oncampus structures, and we recognize, however, that given our own 

experience with this that it is almost impossible to plan for every 

single event, but we have built into our activities and our planning 

and our training both—we had former FEMA Director James Lee 

Witt conduct vulnerability and disaster assessments, including an 

active shooter scenario. We maintain mutual aid agreements with 

local and state public agencies. Unpredictability is inherent in disasters, and planning for such events is a real challenge. 

16

Thank you very much. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Kennedy follows:]

Prepared Statement of Louanne Kennedy, Ph.D., Emeritus Provost and 

Vice President for Academic Affairs CSU, Northridge, California State 

University System 

Introduction 

Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, and members of the Committee, on 

behalf of the California State University (CSU) thank you for inviting me to discuss 

campus emergency preparedness and response. My testimony will focus on my experience as the Provost and Chief Academic Officer of California State University 

Northridge (CSUN) during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the school’s recovery 

from that event, and the changes made to campus emergency response planning as 

a result of the experience. But first, a few words about the CSU. 

The California State University 

Few, if any, university systems match the scope of the CSU. The CSU is the largest and most diverse four-year university system in the country, with 23 campuses, 

approximately 417,000 students and 46,000 faculty and staff. The CSU, stretching 

from Humboldt in the north to San Diego in the south, is renowned for the quality 

of its teaching and for its job-ready graduates. Since the system’s creation in 1961, 

it has awarded about two million degrees. We currently award approximately 84,000 

degrees each year. One key feature of the CSU is its affordability. For 2006-07, the 

CSU’s systemwide fee for full-time undergraduate students is $2,520. With individual campus fees added, the CSU’s total fees average $3,199, which is the lowest 

among any of the comparison public institutions nationwide. And while each of the 

23 CSU campuses has its own identity, with distinct student populations and programs, all share the same mission—to provide high-quality, affordable higher education to meet the changing workforce needs of the people of California. 

The 23 CSU campuses vary greatly in size and structure—from Cal Maritime’s 

1,000 student cadet environment, to large urban campuses, to more traditional midsized residential campus settings. Cal State Northridge (1958) is the intellectual, 

economic and cultural heart of the San Fernando Valley. One of California’s largest 

universities, CSUN each year educates more than 30,000 students and produces 

6,000 highly skilled graduates. The university’s superb academic offerings spread 

between 62 bachelor’s and 50 master’s degrees include teacher preparation and undergraduate engineering programs ranked among the nation’s best. The university 

also hosts a new, on-campus ‘‘learning laboratory’’ high school; a unique aquatic 

therapy center; and exceptional programs in the performing arts, sciences and ethnic studies. Northridge is a culturally and ethnically diverse university focused on 

student-centered learning and success. Its 356-acre campus in suburban northern 

Los Angeles offers a park-like setting with on-campus housing for 2,200 students. 

Students enjoy a wide range of support services and extracurricular activities, including more than 200 student clubs and organizations and an intercollegiate athletic program with 20 teams. 

The Northridge Earthquake 

On January 17, 1994 at 4:31 a.m. the northwest area of Los Angeles, including 

the campus of CSU Northridge, was struck by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. Damage 

to the area is estimated at more than $40 billion. Thousands of aftershocks continued to devastate structures for weeks after the major thrust. 

California State University, Northridge located about a mile from the epicenter incurred more than $400 million in damages. Overall casualties from the quake 

were relatively minimal because of the time of day. The campus was closed for 

break and January 17 was the Martin Luther King holiday. At the time of the disaster, CSUN had 25,000 students and three thousand faculty and staff working in 

117 buildings on 356 acres. The earthquake resulted in damage to 107 of these 

structures, seven of which required demolition. For almost a decade, the campus 

was engaged in teaching and learning activities while simultaneously managing the 

process of reconstruction. 

The Chancellor’s office Emergency Response Unit reached us by walkie-talkie 

within a few hours of the event to offer assistance. On the morning of January 17, 

there were very few public safety officers, one Facilities staff, and a few campus and 

community members on campus. We asked for additional public safety and facilities’ 

staffs to check each of the buildings to make certain no persons were trapped in 

any structures. The chancellor’s office was very helpful in providing additional staff 

17

from other campuses to assist us and this support continued through the years of 

recovery until the final funding sign-off by FEMA in spring 2007. 

We built a temporary campus, coordinated the relocation of classes and offices and 

worked closely with construction companies and federal and state agencies. My presentation today describes the steps taken to reopen the campus four weeks after the 

earthquake on February 14, scheduling 5000 classes in trailers, MYLAR domes, 

playing fields, and borrowed space from local schools and universities. We had no 

library, no science and engineering labs, no instruments for music or materials for 

art classes—or the operating systems to access student records and business processes critical to managing a university. Solutions for each of these missing aspects 

of university life were found. 

I will provide just a brief overview of the first day. We had imperfect information 

yet decisions needed to be made. One of the science buildings was in flames and 

several buildings were clearly dangerous since sections had separated from their 

main structures. Firefighters extinguished the fires in the science building but were 

deployed away from this fire when called to fires where lives were at risk. The fires 

reignited. Hazardous materials were exposed in two other damaged science buildings. We had no phones, no food, no water, no sanitary facilities and no safe structures. A severe limitation for many key staff was their inability to access roads and 

highways to get to campus. Faculty, staff and community members who were able 

to reach campus gathered on the open fields. We used those faculty and staff, regardless of their titles or previous roles, to begin the recovery and to communicate 

our status. While continuing to assess the structures, we began work to establish 

a communications center. 

Communications: We needed to assure our students and staff that the campus 

would reopen and classes would begin for the spring semester. Yet all campus buildings were closed except to the professional staff evaluating which buildings might 

be repaired and returned to use. Exceptions were also made for individuals required 

to photograph and record the damages. Some faculty were anxious to get into the 

buildings to personally examine the damage to their offices and labs, an anxiety 

that did not abate for some weeks. We operated in more of a ‘‘command and control’’ 

structure than is usual in campus relations. The administration was characterized 

as authoritarian by some who felt that democratic decision making was a critical 

component of campus life and must be maintained. We were unable to honor those 

views and maintain safety and security. 

With the help of the Chancellor’s Office, CalState Dominguez Hills Public Safety 

officers, and the CalState Fullerton telecommunications staff, We had improved 

safety and operating phone connections on the field outside the public safety office 

by mid-day on January 18. This area became the new campus operations center. 

Two army tents arrived with the phone connections and we developed scripts for 

staff operating the phones. The aim was to make certain that anyone who called 

the campus was connected to an individual who could answer questions and convey 

as accurately as possible the status of our buildings. We assured all callers that the 

campus would reopen. We would indicate the status of buildings we believed could 

be used. These decisions were based on reports of structural damage. We did not 

yet understand the extent of damages that would result from the thousands of aftershocks. 

Documenting the damages is a critical activity to ensure reimbursement. Part of 

that filming included making a video ‘‘Academic Aftershocks’’ demonstrating the 

week to week and month to month progress over the first two years. 

Building a Team for Recovery: A Crisis Management Team was formed, made up 

of the president and senior campus officers and members of the faculty who were 

experts in planning and who knew the campus geography. The team held 10 a.m. 

and 4 p.m. briefings from each area: academic, student, and administrative affairs. 

We were able to communicate now by phone, established phone trees, and added 

these in person meetings for some faculty and staff directly engaged in recovery efforts. Others were asked not to come to campus. Taped messages were prepared following the last update at 4 p.m. Individuals who called through the night could access the latest summary information. 

By the end of day five, we determined that a temporary campus was the only way 

we could guarantee re-opening. Trying to build a schedule on shifting soil was impossible. We imagined covering the current flat parking areas with trailers, creating 

new parking, and acquiring 400 trailers and four 10,000 sq. ft. MYLAR domes. 

These decisions eliminated the uncertainty created when buildings were listed as 

on-line for use in the 10:00 a.m. meeting and, following aftershocks sometimes as 

high as 5.5 on the Richter scale, were then taken off the reopening plans at the 4:00 

p.m. meetings. Classes were to begin February 14. Local radio stations and newspapers added to our communication network to get the word out to students that 

18

CSUN was ‘‘Not Just Back . . . Better!’’ Information booths were manned at all 

entry points for the first day. Group and individual counseling was made available 

for all faculty, students and staff and loans were made to students who could not 

access their existing accounts. 

Developing a schedule and arranging on-line registration involved difficult and 

sometimes dangerous actions. With the aid of a cherry picker, the Dean of Libraries 

and Information Services entered the second floor window of the admissions and 

records area to retrieve student files. When she and a colleague entered the second 

floor, a 5.5 aftershock hit the campus and that building in particular. The retrieved 

files were flown to CSU Fresno and installed on their computers. Admissions and 

Records staff working from their homes, in campus domes, and at CSU, Fresno 

maintained the records, produced the schedule and enabled students to register as 

though they were connecting to CSU Northridge. CSU system effectiveness is apparent in these successes. 

Radio stations were regularly announcing our status and reopening plans. President Clinton delivered a radio message to the campus. Vice President Gore arrived 

earlier to assess the situation. On February 14, twenty four-thousand students arrived for the first day of classes. 

Opening Day It was a joyful and chaotic opening. The faculty were highly creative 

in serving students in the areas where trailers were nonexistent or not yet operational. The nonexistent trailer category was the fate of the Business and Economics 

College. Selected for placement on the fields used as the Command Center, the College’s trailers were delayed in placement. Faculty drove their cars adjacent to the 

field and placed large placards in the window announcing the car as the new Department Office. Other faculty used bullhorns to gather students for class. For example, a scene on the film has a faculty member shouting ‘‘Accounting 401, Behind 

the Dumpster.’’ Many classes were held outdoors, though that was forced to end 

when the rains came. 

All administrators agreed that we would be the last to occupy permanent space 

and would not move out of our domes and trailers until every faculty member had 

offices and student classrooms were rebuilt. We kept that promise. For the next 

eight years, academic affairs’ staff worked in a 10,000 sq. ft. dome with neither 

walls nor windows. Student and Administrative Affairs shared an adjacent dome. 

The President and her staff worked from a trailer next to the domes. In fall 2002, 

the senior administration moved into permanent space. 

Current Practices for Improving College Campus Safety 

The CSU system campuses all have detailed Emergency Operations Plans (EOP). 

A summary of the CSUN plan is just one example. Cal State Northridge has developed a detailed Emergency Operations Plan and structure that anticipates different 

threats, both natural (earthquakes, fire flooding, hazardous material’s incidents, 

landslides, windstorms and utility outages) and those that are caused by accidental 

or intentional acts (national defense emergency, personal medical emergency, terrorist attack, aircraft crash, bomb threat, avian flu, acts of violence, shooting attack, 

or disturbance by criminal or insane persons). The Northridge plan is reviewed and 

updated annually, and the university regularly conducts training and exercises. 

CSUN Public Safety Department officers, who have full police powers, have been 

specially trained and armed to deal with active shooting incidents. CSUN also has 

mutual aid agreements with other law enforcement agencies such as the California 

Highway Patrol. 

The CSUN Public Safety Department regularly teams with its counterparts in 

university Student Affairs and Counseling to discuss and assess potentially serious 

student behavior problems. If warranted, university police conduct threat assessments designed to head off problems. 

The University has a functioning emergency broadcast system on the main campus. The system uses speakers mounted on the roofs of major buildings, allow voice 

broadcasting throughout the main campus. 

In an initiative begun after Hurricane Katrina, the University is currently testing 

another mass notification system called Connect-Ed that can rapidly deliver recorded voice messages (and text messages) to the phones and e-mail in boxes of all 

students, faculty and staff, including TTY capability for those who are deaf and 

hard-of-hearing. 

This year, the campus opened a new, state-of-the-art $10 million Public Safety/

Parking Department headquarters located in the heart of the campus. The two-story 

26,000-square-foot facility included an expanded Emergency Operations Center. 

Public Safety also maintains a 40-foot command post trailer that can serve as a mobile EOC. Two other sites are also under development. Redundancy for emergency 

response is built into the development of units at different sites. 

19

Should a disaster occur a Campus Closure Integrated Communication Protocol is 

activated. This protocol supplements the CSUN Emergency Operations Plan by providing detailed guidelines for communication with members of the campus community when classes are cancelled and the campus is closed due to an emergency or 

other unforeseen circumstance. The Emergency Operations Plan provides specific 

guidelines on notifications, mobilization of the Crisis Action Team, and possible activation of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). 

Currently all 23 campuses of the CSU and the Office of the Chancellor have developed all hazard (natural and man-made) preparedness plans. Each plan has addenda for a specific hazard and many have been in development since the mid 

1990s. Initially the campus plans were developed using the State’s Standardized 

Emergency Management System (SEMS) and then revised to comply with the federal mandated National Incident Management System (NIMS). 

Communications is the fundamental capability to prevent, react, respond and recover from an event. There is no one size or one technology that fits all situations. 

Each campus establishes its individual communication plan to operate for a variety 

of incidents/hazards using their available technologies for the specific event (broadcast e-mail, websites, phones, bullhorns, sirens, etc.). 

Training occurs for all levels of CSU employees including Presidents, their designated back-ups and members of the emergency Operations Team. Routine sessions 

emphasize overall plans and specific facets of the campus plan. Crisis Communications is an area of focus in the CSU leadership training. 

Crisis Communications such as occurred in the Northridge Earthquake, Katrina 

and shooting and terror acts require tough decisions by humans with limited information available as a crisis unfolds. Questions that must be asked are: 

• How or can this event escalate in severity? 

• What needs to be done immediately to prevent further injury, death or damage 

to property? 

The CSU strives to respond appropriately through its actions and communications 

to its campus population, community, and for large scale or catastrophic events, 

local regional, national and international media and populations. 

CSU has experienced the misfortune of active shooters over the years and have 

developed specific campus plans for this type of event. All the events whether in 

the CSU or in other locations, cause us to re-evaluate and update the campus’ overall plans. 

In spring 2001, the CSU engaged former FEMA Director James Lee Witt to conduct various hazard/vulnerability assessments, including an active shooter scenario 

at SFSU. We maintain active ‘‘mutual aid’’ agreements with local and state public 

safety agencies to assist when an event exceeds our capabilities. 

Future CSU Emergency Planning 

• Continue to re-assess our active shooter and all hazard plans 

• Re-emphasis placed on Prevention, Response, Communications and Recovery 

from the lessons learned from the Virginia Tech University (VTU) event 

• Continue to exercise our plans and test both our capabilities and test for events 

beyond our abilities and work on shortfalls observed in our practices 

• Continue to seek funding and grants to improve our equipment and plan documents 

• Training sessions planned for our Presidents at the end of June with James Lee 

Witt, including crisis communications and lessons learned from VTU 

• Continue to work with State Office of Emergency Services including participating in the GAP analysis initiative to identify and quantify what is available and 

what will be needed in a catastrophic event 

The CSU remains vigilant in our efforts to preserve and protect life and property, 

and prepare to the best of our ability for such an event, to expect the unexpected, 

communicate our plans to the broadest possible audience, involve our entire campus 

community in improving our plans and continually seek to improve through routine 

testing and exercising of our plans for an event we hope will never happen. 

Unpredictability is inherent in disasters and makes planning for such an event 

a challenge. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Cornell. 

20

STATEMENT OF DEWEY CORNELL, DIRECTOR, VIRGINIA 

YOUTH VIOLENCE PROJECT, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 

Mr. CORNELL. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today, and 

thank you, Representative Scott, for your kind introduction and for 

all of the work that you have done over the years. 

In 1999, I assisted the FBI in its study of school shootings which 

recommended that schools use a threat assessment approach to 

prevent school violence. Threat assessment is a standard law enforcement approach developed by the Secret Service and used in 

many different settings. Threat assessment involves identifying a 

threat, evaluating how serious it is and taking action to prevent it 

from being carried out. My colleagues and I developed and fieldtested a threat assessment procedure for primary and secondary 

schools that can be extended to colleges. I am going to talk first 

about school safety and then about threat assessment. Pardon me 

for speaking quickly. I have got a lot to cover, and you know how 

professors love to pontificate. 

In response to every school shooting, there are calls to increase 

security and even to arm teachers. Such recommendations focus on 

crisis response, but prevention can not wait until the gunman is in 

your parking lot. I am here today to emphasis prevention. We have 

to study the problem objectively and make sure that our responses 

are not skewed by extreme cases. After Columbine, many schools 

overreacted by expanding zero tolerance policies so that students 

were expelled for actions as trivial as having a plastic knife in their 

lunch box. Despite the recent shootings, scientific studies cited in 

my written statement demonstrate that schools are safe and that 

violence is decreasing, not increasing, both in our schools and on 

our college campuses. With the exception of this year, there are 

about 16 murders on college campuses each year. With 4,200 colleges, the average college can expect a murder on campus about 

once every 265 years. If you include murders in the surrounding 

community, off campus as well as on campus, the rate is about 

once every 9 years. Now, of course, we want the number to be zero. 

We want to prevent every single possible fatality, but we have to 

look objectively and recognize the challenge that is in front of us 

to deal with that lofty standard. In addition to homicides, we have 

less severe but more pervasive forms of violence such as bullying 

and fighting, and fortunately, a scientific review of more than 200 

controlled studies has found that school violence prevention programs can reduce violent and disruptive behavior by about 50 percent. Funding for school violence prevention to the Office of Safe 

and Drug Free Schools should be protected and expanded. Terms 

like ‘‘school violence’’ and ‘‘campus violence,’’ I think, are misleading, because they imply that the location is the defining feature 

of the problem. We have had mass shootings in restaurants, but no 

one talks about restaurant violence. The focus on location leads to 

unrealistic efforts to make our open public places so secure that 

they are no longer open or public, so we cannot turn our schools 

into fortresses. 

The Virginia Tech shooting appears to be the act of an individual 

who was paranoid, delusional and suicidal. This shooting represent 

21

a mental health problem more than a school problem. Our Nation 

suffers from poor insurance coverage for mental health services and 

from poor communication and coordination among those services. 

Even when we know someone needs treatment, there is no effective 

mechanism to make sure the treatment is delivered and no followup to make sure it was effective. College campuses see many students with serious mental health problems. Yet, their staffing levels and resources are limited and are focused on short-term treatment. 

Now, both the FBI and the Secret Service recommended a threatassessment approach because, in almost every school shooting, the 

violent student communicated his intentions well in advance. At 

the University of Virginia, we trained threat assessment teams in 

35 schools for field test, and each team included a school administrator, a psychologist and a law enforcement officer. Although serious acts of violence are rare, threats are very common, and in 1 

year, these teams investigated 188 student threats of violence. All 

of the threats were not the same. About 75 percent were just statements made in anger or jest that could be readily resolved with an 

explanation, counseling and an apology. The remaining 30 percent 

were more serious, and usually they involved one student threatening to fight another student, but we also had threats to shoot 

and kill that were resolved. In these cases, our teams conducted a 

safety evaluation that included both the psychological assessment 

and a law enforcement investigation. Every threat signals a problem that should be addressed before it escalates into violence, and 

in our follow-up study, we found that none of the threats were carried out. Just six students were arrested, and three were expelled, 

which is much better than if the schools had used a zero tolerance 

approach. 

A study by the American Psychological Association found that 

zero tolerance has a damaging effect on student achievement and 

no evidence that it makes schools safer. 

So, over the past 5 years, we have trained thousands of school 

teams in a dozen States. Memphis City schools adapted our motto, 

and were able to resolve more than 200 threats without any known 

violent outcomes and, again, keeping almost all of the students in 

school, but there has been no Federal program designated to fund 

threat assessment research or training, and so, when this committee works on No Child Left Behind, I hope you will make threat 

assessment part of every college’s comprehensive school safety 

plan. 

Let me wrap up by saying that threat assessment can be extended to colleges, even though it is easier to monitor and to supervise a high school student than a college student. Threat assessment is used in business and in industry to prevent workplace violence, so this challenge can be overcome. 

In closing, our schools and colleges are safe, but in a large nation 

with thousands of schools, even rare events will occur with troubling frequency and skew our perceptions of safety. We must avoid 

overacting to rare events and make better use of prevention methods, including threat assessment. 

Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony. I am 

pleased to answer any questions. 

22

[The statement of Mr. Cornell follows:]

Prepared Statement of Dewey G. Cornell, Ph.D., Forensic Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Education, Director of the Virginia Youth Violence 

Project, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia 

Student Threat Assessment 

Good morning Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon and distinguished 

members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me here today. I applaud you 

for your efforts to make college campuses safer by convening this hearing. 

I am Dr. Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist, a member of the American Psychological Association, and Professor in the School of Education at the University of Virginia. I direct the Virginia Youth Violence Project, which studies school 

safety and violence prevention (http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu). For 23 

years I have conducted research on the psychological characteristics of young people 

who commit violent acts, and as a clinician, I have examined many juvenile and 

young adult offenders. 

In 1999 I assisted the FBI in its study of school shootings (O’Toole, 2000). Both 

the FBI study and another study conducted by the Secret Service (Fein et al., 2002) 

strongly recommended that schools train their staff to use a threat assessment approach to prevent student violence. Threat assessment is a procedure developed by 

the Secret Service that has become a standard law enforcement approach used in 

many different settings (Fein, Vossekuil, & Holden, 1995). Threat assessment involves identifying a threat, evaluating how serious it is, and taking action to prevent it from being carried out. Most educators were completely unfamiliar with 

‘‘threat assessment’’ and were unprepared to implement this approach. In response, 

my colleagues and I at the University of Virginia have developed and field-tested 

a threat assessment model for primary and secondary schools. I am going to talk 

first about the safety of our schools and then about our research on threat assessment and how it can be used to improve the safety conditions in our nation’s colleges as well as our K-12 schools. 

This year we have experienced tragic shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania and at Virginia Tech, among others. In response to such horrific events, there 

have been calls to increase security at our schools, and even suggestions to arm our 

teachers. There are recommendations to install sirens and cameras and to create 

high-tech warning systems to alert students to an attack. While these interventions 

focus on crisis response, it is critically important that our efforts concentrate on prevention strategies. Prevention cannot wait until the gunman is in your parking lot. 

School shootings can be prevented and I am here today to emphasize prevention. 

In order to prevent violence, we have to study the problem objectively and make 

sure that our responses are not skewed by extreme cases. After Columbine, many 

schools overreacted by expanding zero tolerance programs so that students were expelled for behaviors as trivial as bringing a plastic knife to school in their lunch box. 

We continue to see students as young as five years old being arrested for misbehavior that would have been handled much differently ten years ago. We have to 

be careful that our responses are measured and reasonable. 

Schools are safe 

First, I want to address school safety from a broader and more positive perspective. Despite recent events, the level of violent crime in our schools and colleges is 

low. National crime statistics demonstrate that it is safer for a student to be at 

school than to be at home or on the street. Crime victim research also finds that 

students are less likely to be harmed at school than in the community (DeVoe, 

Peter,Noonan, Snyder, & Baum, 2005). These findings hold up for both K-12 schools 

and colleges. For example, the violent crime rate is lower on college campuses than 

off campuses and the victimization rate for college students is lower than for persons the same age who are not in college (Baum & Klaus, 2005). 

Furthermore, there is no upward trend of increasing violence in our schools. Over 

the past ten years, the rate of violence in schools and colleges has actually declined 

substantially (Baum & Klein, 2005; DeVoe, Peter,Noonan, Snyder, & Baum, 2005). 

The scientific studies to support these conclusions are cited in my written statement. 

According to the latest available data from the U.S. Department of Education 

(2001-2004), there were 95 murders on college campuses in the six years from 1999 

to 2004, an average of 16 per year. Since there are approximately 4,200 colleges in 

the United States, this means the average college can expect to experience a murder 

on campus about once every 265 years. If you include all 2,808 murders that occurred in the surrounding community—off campus as well as on campus—the rate 

23

is much higher: about once every 9 years. This is a reflection of the much higher 

rate of violence in the general community. 

It was tragic to have 33 deaths in one day at Virginia Tech, but according to the 

CDC, every year more than 30,000 persons die by firearms through suicide or homicide. This is the equivalent of the Virginia Tech death toll occurring 2 to 3 times 

every day. This is not to minimize the tragedy of school shootings; we want the 

number to be zero. But if we are going to prevent these events, we have to start 

with placing them in a broader context. 

Schools need prevention programs 

Although research demonstrates that schools are safe and that extreme acts of violence are unlikely, we do have less severe forms of violence such as bullying, fighting, and threatening behavior. These are important problems in their own right, and 

they are also important because they can escalate into shootings. 

Fortunately, we have effective violence prevention programs for schools. There 

have been more than 200 controlled studies of school violence prevention programs, 

and we know that school-based mental health programs and counseling focused on 

helping students learn how to solve problems and resolve conflicts are effective (Wilson, Lipsey, & Derzon, 2003). A scientific review of these studies by researchers at 

Vanderbilt University found that they can reduce violent and disruptive behavior 

by about 50 percent (Wilson, Lipsey, & Derzon, 2003). If these programs were more 

widely used, we could identify and help troubled students before they reach the 

point of homicide. The main source of funding for school violence prevention is 

through the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Funding for this program should 

be protected and expanded. 

Terms like ‘‘school violence’’ and ‘‘campus violence’’ are misleading because they 

imply that the location is the defining feature of the problem. We have had mass 

shootings in restaurants and shopping malls, but no one speaks about ‘‘restaurant 

violence’’ or ‘‘mall violence.’’ The focus on location leads to unrealistic efforts to 

make open, public places so secure that they are no longer open or public. We cannot turn our schools into fortresses. We cannot search every backpack on college 

campuses. 

The Virginia Tech shooting appears to be the act of an individual with severe 

mental illness who was paranoid, delusional, and suicidal. This shooting represents 

a mental health problem more than a school problem. Our nation suffers from poor 

insurance coverage for mental health services, and from poor communication and coordination among these services. Even when we know someone needs treatment, 

there is no effective mechanism to make sure the treatment is delivered and no follow-up to make sure it was effective. College campuses see a substantial number 

of students with serious mental health problems, yet their staffing levels and resources are focused on short term counseling. 

Schools need a threat assessment approach 

After Columbine, there was widespread demand for a checklist of characteristics 

that we could use to identify the next shooter. This is called profiling, and both the 

FBI and Secret Service have concluded that profiling is not possible for this kind 

of crime (O’Toole, 2000; Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). The 

backgrounds of school shooters are too varied, and the characteristics they have in 

common are too general. 

However, both the FBI and Secret Service observed that in almost every case the 

violent student communicated his or her intentions well in advance of an attack. 

These individuals usually made threats or engaged in threatening behavior that 

frightened others. The problem was that there was not an effective, systematic response to these threats. The FBI also observed that many potential school shootings 

were prevented because threats were investigated and found to be credible. In light 

of these findings, both the FBI and the Secret Service, in conjunction with the U.S. 

Department of Education, recommended that schools adopt a threat assessment approach (O’Toole, 2000; Fein et al., 2002). 

Threat assessment is a standardized procedure for investigating a threat, and if 

the threat is a serious substantive threat, taking preventive action. At the University of Virginia we developed a set of threat assessment guidelines and we trained 

teams in 35 schools (Cornell, et al., 2004). Each team included a school administrator, a psychologist or counselor, and a law enforcement officer. The teams fieldtested the guidelines for a year. Although serious acts of violence are rare in 

schools, threats are common. The school teams investigated 188 student threats of 

violence. 

All threats are not the same. Some threats are just statements made in anger or 

in jest, or attempts to gain attention or be provocative. The first step in threat asVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
24

sessment is to determine whether the threat is serious, which we term substantive, 

or not serious or transient. Fortunately, most threats are transient and can be readily resolved with an explanation, an apology, and some counseling. About 70 percent 

of the threats were resolved in this manner. 

The remaining 30 percent of threats were more serious, usually one student 

threatening to fight another student, but we had threats to shoot and stab and kill 

that could not be easily resolved. In these cases, our threat assessment team conducted a safety evaluation that included two components: a psychological assessment of the student and a law enforcement investigation of whether there was evidence that the person was preparing to carry out the threat. The combination of 

mental health and law enforcement is essential to a threat assessment. 

The team takes a problem solving approach—why did this student make a threat 

and what can we do to reduce the risk of violence? We found students who had serious mental health problems that needed treatment. We found students who were 

victims of bullying and looking for a way to strike back. We found conflicts over 

girlfriends and boyfriends. All kinds of threats. 

Every threat signals an underlying problem that should be addressed before it escalates into violence. In our follow-up study, we could not find that any of the 

threats were carried out. Out of 188 cases, we had just six students who were arrested and three who were expelled. This is a much better result than if the schools 

had used a zero tolerance approach that would have resulted in numerous expulsions. The American Psychological Association’s report on zero tolerance (Skiba et 

al., 2006) found that school expulsions have a damaging effect on student achievement and increase the dropout rate. There is no evidence that zero tolerance makes 

schools safer. 

Memphis City Public Schools has adapted our model and found that they were 

able to resolve more than 200 threats without any known violent outcomes and 

again keeping almost all of the students in school (Strong, Wilkins, & Cornell, 

2007). Over the past 5 years we have trained thousands of threat assessment teams 

in a dozen states. But we need more research on threat assessment. There has been 

no federal program designated to fund threat assessment research. The Secret Service has conducted threat assessment training in conjunction with the Office of Safe 

and Drug-Free Schools, but this has been a limited effort. We need a strong initiative to make threat assessment part of every school’s comprehensive school safety 

plan. I hope this Committee will keep this need in mind when it works to strengthen crucial federal programs such as those authorized under No Child Left Behind. 

Threat assessment can be adapted for colleges, too, even though there are some 

important differences between K-12 schools and colleges. College students are adults 

and not under parental control. It is much easier to monitor and supervise a high 

school student than a college student. On the other hand, threat assessment is used 

in business and industry to prevent workplace violence (Gelles & Turner, 2003), so 

these challenges can be overcome. 

Conclusions 

In closing, our educational institutions have an obligation to maintain a safe and 

supportive environment that is conducive to learning. Overall, our schools and colleges are safe, but in a large nation with thousands of schools, even rare events will 

occur with troubling frequency and skew our perceptions of safety and risk. We 

must avoid overreacting to rare events and make better use of prevention methods 

that address the ordinary forms of violence as well as the more extreme ones. 

Threat assessment is a standard violence prevention approach used by law enforcement in many different settings. Our research supports the use of threat assessment in schools, but we need more research and training to make it a standard 

practice and to extend it to colleges. We urge you to support research and training 

on threat assessment for our schools and colleges. 

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to present this testimony. I would be 

pleased to answer any questions. 

REFERENCES

Cornell, D., Sheras, P. Kaplan, S., McConville, D., Douglass, J., Elkon, A., 

McKnight, L., Branson, C., & Cole, J. (2004). Guidelines for student threat assessment: Field-test findings. School Psychology Review, 33, 527-546. 

DeVoe, J. F., Peter, K., Noonan, M., Snyder, T. D., & Baum, K. (2005). Indicators 

of school crime and safety: 2005 (NCES 2006-001/NCJ 210697). U.S. Departments of Education and Justice. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 

25

Fein, R.A., Vossekuil, F., & Holden, G.A. (1995). Threat assessment: An approach 

to prevent targeted violence. National Institute of Justice: Research in Action, 

1-7 (NCJ 155000), Available http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac.htm. 

Fein, R., Vossekuil, B., Pollack, W., Borum, R., Modzeleski, W. & Reddy, M. (2002). 

Threat assessment in schools: A guide to managing threatening situations and 

to creating safe school climates. Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education. 

Gelles, M.G. & Turner, J. T. (2003). Threat assessment: A risk management approach. Bethesda, MD: Haworth Press, Inc. 

O’Toole, M.E. (2000). The school shooter: A threat assessment perspective. Quantico, 

Virginia: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Federal Bureau of 

Investigation. 

Skiba, R., Reynolds, C., Graham, S., Sheras, P., Conoley, J., & Garcia-Vazquez, E. 

(2006). Are zero tolerance policies effective in the schools? An evidentiary review and recommendations. A report by the American Psychological Association 

Zero Tolerance Task Force. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 

Strong, K., Wilkins, D., & Cornell, D. (2007). Student threat assessment in Memphis 

City Schools. Unpublished report. Memphis, Tennessee: Memphis City Schools. 

U.S. Department of Education (2001- 2004). Summary of Campus Crime and Security Statistics. Washington, D.C. (http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/

crime/criminaloffenses/index.html) 

Vossekuil, B., Fein, R. A., Reddy, M., Borum, R., & Modzeleski, W. (2002). The final 

report and findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the prevention 

of school attacks in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service and 

U.S. Department of Education. 

Wilson, S.J., Lipsey, M.W., & Derzon, J.H. (2003). The effects of school-based intervention programs on aggressive behavior: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, 136-149. 

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

Dewey G. Cornell, Ph. D. is a forensic clinical psychologist and Professor of Education in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Cornell 

is Director of the UVA Youth Violence Project and a faculty associate of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy. As a clinician, Dr. Cornell has 24 years 

experience evaluating juvenile and adult violent offenders and testifying in legal 

proceedings, including school shootings and other juvenile homicide cases. He consulted with the FBI in its study of school shootings and developed threat assessment 

guidelines for schools that are being used throughout Virginia and other states. As 

a researcher, Dr. Cornell has authored more than 100 publications in psychology 

and education, including studies of juvenile homicide, bullying, psychopathy, and violence. He is currently directing a statewide study of school climate and discipline 

practices in 312 Virginia high schools. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Dr. Walbert. 

STATEMENT OF JAN WALBERT, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STUDENT PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATORS, AND 

VICE PRESIDENT FOR STUDENT AFFAIRS, ARCADIA UNIVERSITY 

Ms. WALBERT. Good morning. 

Chairman Miller, thank you for that generous introduction. Mr. 

McKeon and other members of the committee, I am pleased to be 

here to testify today. 

In addition to representing Arcadia University and NASPA, I am 

here today due to extensive collaboration among student affairs associations included on the consortium on government relations for 

student affairs, which, in addition to NASPA, is composed of the 

American College Personnel Association, the Association of College 

Unions International, the Association of Student Judicial Affairs, 

26

and the Association of College and University Housing Officers 

International. There are three primary points I will address. 

One, the role of student affairs professionals is central to the implementation of effective education, prevention and intervention 

systems that do exist on campuses. Given that 17 million students 

attend colleges and universities, it is worth noting that U.S. News 

and World Report indicate campuses remain among the safest 

places in America. 

Two, there is considerable evidence that we are facing increases 

in the mental health issues among students. Research suggests 

that strategies are effective in dealing with college students, and 

existing laws protect and support students’ privacy as well as serve 

to protect the community, and most importantly, for today, we can 

always learn more and work to improve our current systems. I 

speak now only from my own experiences as a senior student affairs officer, but I also speak on behalf of more than 25,000 student 

affairs administrators throughout the U.S. 

As dedicated educators, vice presidents, deans in those many 

areas that were mentioned in the introduction, we work with the 

students 24/7. We enhance students’ well-being and ensure that 

our campus environments are conducive to student learning. Our 

roles include collaboration on prevention and intervention strategies as well as planning for and responding to those critical situations and campus emergencies. Contrary to the typical perspective 

that academic endeavors occur only in the classroom, we in student 

affairs educate at every level and around the clock. For example, 

I am sure that each of you can think of life skills you learned somewhere other than a classroom as an undergraduate student. 

There are no guarantees as we are sadly reminded at this time 

in our history. The horrific events that occurred at Virginia Tech 

could have happened anywhere across this Nation. They could have 

happened on another campus despite the fact that there are extensive systems to deal with crises such as the death of a student by 

natural causes or suicide as well as natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. However, primary efforts of prevention and intervention are utilized with much greater frequency. There is no way to 

count how many crises have been averted. It may not be surprising 

that we face critical situations so frequently that many of us are 

quite familiar with communication chains, law enforcement colleagues and mental health resources. When I walk into our local 

hospital or one time when I was wheeled in as a patient, the staff 

recognized me and often called me by name. Prevention, intervention and response to critical situations succeed with extensive collaboration. When a serious concern about a student recently surfaced on our campus—and there have been several recently—contacts were made with public safety, faculty and residents’ life staff. 

Ultimately, we engaged the family. With everyone’s assistance, the 

student was admitted to an inpatient facility. Whether the student’s life will change enough to help that student survive over 

time, I may never know, but we do know that cooperation with 

counseling staff and others allowed us to get that student to a safer 

place at that time. 

Like this example, most incidences occur on campuses without 

fanfare, with no media exposure, and they result in safe outcomes 

27

for students. Due to the success, we can anticipate that the demands for services will continue to escalate as will the need for additional resources. Students exhibiting disruptive or dangerous behavior may face interim suspensions and administrative or disciplinary action, which may include or require consultation with qualified mental health professionals and parents. 

We are constantly learning common and best practices occur at 

institutions of all sizes and types. Approaches to enhanced counseling services, case management strategies and emergency response protocols are shared regularly. Even with extensive collaboration, sound practices, policies and laws, we cannot eliminate all 

risks of crises or emergencies. We must plan and intentionally 

think through these issues. 

When a parent called me on the morning of September 11th, he 

asked, ‘‘How are you going to protect my daughter?’’ I responded 

quite genuinely. 

I said, ‘‘Sir, we have not been able to protect the Pentagon today. 

You can see how it would be irresponsible of higher education to 

make promises of our ability to absolutely protect the safety of each 

and every student. We may wish we were sanctuaries, and the public may still consider us as such, but the concept of an ivory tower 

is long gone.’’

Thank you for this opportunity to represent my colleagues in the 

important work that they do. I look forward to your questions. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Walbert follows:]

Prepared Statement of Janet E. Walbert, Ed.D., President, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, Vice President for Student 

Affairs, Arcadia University 

Good morning Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, and Members of the 

Committee on Education and Labor. 

My name is Janet Walbert and I serve as Vice President for Student Affairs at 

Arcadia University, a coeducational private, comprehensive university located in 

Glenside, Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I also testify to you today 

in the capacity of President of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). NASPA is the largest professional association for student affairs 

administrators, faculty, and graduate students in the student affairs field, representing more than 1,400 campuses in 29 countries around the world. 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify today. I am here to speak not 

only from my own experiences as a senior student affairs officer, but I also speak 

on behalf of the more than 25,000 student affairs administrators employed at colleges and universities throughout the nation. We collaborate with many colleagues 

and other associations. Student affairs administrators on campuses across the country are working to address and enhance students’ well-being and to ensure that our 

campus environments are conducive to student learning. In addition, national student affairs associations are working together to provide additional best practices 

and policy considerations. The Consortium on Government Relations for Student Affairs is composed of: American College Personnel Association (ACPA); Association of 

College Unions International (ACUI); Association of Student Judicial Affairs (ASJA); 

National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA); and Association 

of College and University Housing Officers International (ACUHO-I). These organizations collaborate on the development of strategies and public policy issues of concern to student affairs professionals. It is through the efforts of such collaboration 

that I testify today. 

There are five primary points I hope to address through this testimony. 

• Student Affairs professionals are meaningfully engaged in the lives and wellbeing of college and university students. 

• Effective systems exist on most campuses and address a large majority of situations, with many situations never reaching a critical point because of effective prevention and early intervention, but there are no guarantees. 

28

• We face increases in the mental health issues among students and these challenges are successfully addressed in most cases. • Current laws exist to protect and support students’ privacy as well as protect 

the community and allow for communication with appropriate family members when 

an individual’s personal well-being is at risk. • We can always learn more and we must continue to work on improving systems. 

Student affairs administrators, like me, play key roles in educating our nation’s 

students as we work directly with students and the varied support networks of family members and other university colleagues. In addition, our roles include planning 

for campus emergencies and managing campus crises, which occur at many levels 

and in a range of magnitudes of visibility and complexities. As professionals we 

dedicate our daily (and nightly) work with our students, and team with many others 

to enhance the quality of the learning environments in our campus communities. 

While there are no guarantees, as we are sadly reminded at this time in our history, 

we work collaboratively to address prevention, intervention and response to critical 

situations involving our students. 

Student affairs administrators are vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, mental health professionals, housing officers, student activities administrators, fiscal officers, food service administrators, admissions officers, Greek life advisors, recreation managers, and so much more. It is the job of student affairs professionals to facilitate student learning through action, contemplation, reflection, and 

emotional engagement, as well as information acquisition. In the college and university environment student affairs departments often work collaboratively with colleagues in of academic affairs to promote the development of the whole student. In 

order to prepare for professional positions within the field of student affairs, administrators build upon personal experiences and often enroll in graduate school programs, grounded in student development theory as well as counseling and leadership components. Through ongoing professional development provided by postsecondary institutions, professional associations and collegial networks, student affairs 

administrators are able to ensure that current best practices are implemented on 

their respective campuses. As educators we are prepare students for effective and 

engaged citizenship. 

Every day, and most nights and weekends, my colleagues across the nation focus 

their collective energies and attention on how our living and learning environments 

are meeting the needs of individual students and the expectations of parents. Contrary to the typical perspective that academic endeavors occur only in classrooms, 

we in student affairs educate at every level, around the clock. 

The horrific events that occurred at Virginia Tech on April 16th could have happened anywhere across the nation. They could have happened on another campus 

despite the fact that higher education administrators generally, and student affairs 

administrators specifically, have established extensive systems to deal with individual student crises as well as larger catastrophes on campus—whether it is the 

death of a student by natural causes or suicide, natural disasters like Hurricane 

Katrina, or acts of terrorism that could potentially harm students, faculty, and staff. 

Our focus has been and will continue to be on diligence in both efforts of prevention 

as well as effective response. 

The reality is that extremely good systems are fully operational on most of our 

campuses. Student affairs officers currently share best practices and strategies, 

meet with experts, and participate in electronic and in-person educational programs 

throughout the year. Participation in the National Incident Management System 

(NIMS) is an example of on-line training and efforts to integrate common knowledge 

and systems into campus-based protocols and policies. 

Virtually every college and university campus today has a crisis management 

plan, clear protocols for managing emergencies, and strategies to communicate with 

the campus constituencies directly and indirectly affected. These plans were implemented six years ago when our campuses moved swiftly and expeditiously to respond to the events of September 11, 2001—to secure our campuses and to respond 

to the needs of our students. When Texas A&M University responded immediately 

to a campus bonfire accident that killed 12 students and injured 27 others, the 

emergency protocols were successfully enacted. Similarly protocols were in place 

that helped restore order to the University of Florida following the killing of three 

college students by a serial murderer. They are implemented any time a student 

dies on our campuses. It may be considered unfortunate, but not unexpected, that 

so many campuses deal with crises of one nature or another frequently enough to 

be familiar with the various aspects of our communication chains, local law enforcement agencies, mental health resources, and community health organizations. 

The challenge has always been and remains today that college and university 

campuses, by their very, nature are open and accessible places. In testimony proVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
29

vided by Dr. Thomas Kepple, President of Juniata College, in the Pennsylvania Senate Education Committee Hearings on May 2, 2007, he stated: ‘‘The founders of 

America’s early colleges were often graduates of universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Unlike those exclusive universities, Americans wanted our colleges to be inclusive. * * * Our colleges and universities are very much physical symbols of a 

new and very inclusive democracy.’’ Many of the nation’s 439 public four-year institutions cover acres of land and enroll in the tens of thousands of students. Some 

17 million students attend this country’s more than 4,000 colleges and universities. 

Most campuses do not have single points of entry or any means for controlling access to every square inch of campus. We may wish we were sanctuaries—and the 

public may still consider us as such—but the concept of academe’s ivory tower is 

long gone. 

Reports of disruptive behavior in classrooms, residence halls, and even in surrounding communities are commonly referred to student affairs administrators. To 

best address both isolated and repeated problems, a coordinated effort from administrators across campus is required. In attempts to identify students at risk, we must 

constantly work to improve our ability to share information and cover all bases. This 

includes information from peers, from mental health centers, from faculty, from 

other students in residence halls, from concerned parents, and from campus police. 

When a student appears on the radar screen at any corner of campus, we must and 

do exercise prudent judgment and share information with appropriate constituents 

on campus. Intervention must be rapid but correct, and points of intervention across 

campus must be clearly defined and communicated. 

Situations where faculty raise questions, students report situations, and other 

staff members know of special circumstances, such as a death in the family, arise 

every day on our campuses. We deal with these situations formally, informally, and 

directly with students. Depending on the magnitude of the situation and the information available from the student, communication with parents or family members 

may occur. From the time students set foot on our campuses, we build partnerships 

with parents to enhance communications. Frequently, students engage their parents 

as a result of the direct involvement of student affairs. The existing laws allow for 

communication with appropriate family members when an individual’s personal 

well-being is at risk. Balancing the standard thresholds and expectations of when 

to communicate continues to be at the forefront of the thinking of student affairs 

administrators, as it has been historically for counselors in confidential relationships with clients. 

As part of a college or university’s executive leadership team, vice presidents for 

student affairs and deans of students work hand-in-hand with their senior administrative counterparts and other student affairs and academic affairs staff members 

to plan, execute, and evaluate campus prevention efforts, crisis protocols, and intervention strategies. Collaboration on campus is essential and common. None of us 

can do this alone. We also work in coordination with the campus safety departments 

and local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to enhance safety inside and 

outside the campus. 

At all institutions, students are repeatedly informed of safety protocols. Written 

and verbal communications ensure that students are informed of campus safety policies and procedures. Programs such as orientation sessions and residence hall meetings facilitate students’ understanding of these policies in an effort to augment their 

own and their peers’ safety on and off campus. Students must take some responsibility to understand the importance of this information. All of these mechanisms are 

also enhanced with the development of electronic communication allowing access to 

this information at the touch of a fingertip 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Campus security is enhanced with the utilization of electronic surveillance and 

electronic access to residence halls. Student affairs professionals train resident assistants to identify potential threats to the safety and security of students living in 

residence halls. While resident assistants cannot take the place of campus safety 

and law enforcement officials or campus judicial officers, they are well trained and 

effective liaisons in recognizing and addressing interpersonal conflicts, code of student conduct violations, signs of mental health concerns, and other critical issues 

relating to the well-being of residents. 

Our campuses are inseparable from the very communities and diverse cultures 

that form this great country. Like thousands of communities across the nation, we 

have our share of residents who abuse drugs or alcohol, who have been involved in 

confrontations with faculty members or fellow students, or who have traded threatening e-mails. These situations are not unusual, nor are they taken lightly. 

Just like the general population, our student populations include increasing numbers of individuals dealing with mental health issues. In recent years, students increasingly report stress, depression, thoughts of suicide, relationship problems, and 

30

substance abuse problems. In the 2006 National Survey of Counseling Center Directors that includes data provided by directors from 367 counseling centers at institutions across the United States 92 percent of the respondents believed that the number of students with severe psychological problems has increased in recent years. 

According to the survey, directors reported that 40 percent of their clients have severe psychological problems. In a survey conducted by the American College Health 

Association-National College Health Assessment (2006) of more than 94,000 students and 123 postsecondary institutions, more than half of the students reported 

feeling hopeless in the past year, more than 35 percent reported feeling so depressed 

that they could not function three or more times a year, and nearly 10 percent reported seriously considering suicide in the previous year. Additional research reported in 2006 conducted by Allan Schwartz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, indicates when the data related to suicide is 

analyzed comparing college students and the general population, controlled for age 

and gender, it appears that counseling centers are effective in treating suicidal students. The bottom line: healthcare professionals have become so good at treating 

young people with psychological issues that growing numbers are able to attend college and obtain degrees. Thanks to greater student access to psychotherapy, advances in medications to treat psychological problems, and growing public acceptance of antidepressant therapies, we have more students on our campuses that face 

these mental health problems. In addition, we have many students who, with support and responsiveness of strong campus professionals, manage or overcome their 

personal hurdles and successfully complete their educational pursuits. 

Student affairs administrators are among those who are lowering thresholds of 

tolerance for aberrant behavior, whether it is the possession of weapons, verbal 

threats, or stalking. We are swiftly taking action before student behavior becomes 

harmful to others, and we are making it easier and more comfortable for students 

to raise concerns to campus staff members in a confidential manner. Hotlines, web 

access to file reports of concern, information about referral mechanisms, and communication about how to assist others are common on many campuses. The ability 

to document how many incidents are averted or limited in scope because of expedient responses by student and professional staff is limited. It is extremely difficult 

if not impossible to document concrete results of prevention efforts. Yet, we know 

that we are educating about civility, communication, conflict resolution, and understanding diversity across the nation’s campuses. 

Higher education is not above the law. We must protect individual rights and follow the law in dealing with an individual’s right to participate fully in campus life. 

If a student misses a series of classes because they are depressed or they openly 

discuss suicide or other unacceptable behaviors, we cannot simply banish them from 

our campuses. It is these very types of situations that, when addressed, are typically 

resolved before a tragedy occurs. 

Our campuses must abide by federal and state confidentiality laws regarding key 

records and communications and the release of confidential information. Section 504 

of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects qualified disabled individuals from being 

excluded from participation in, being denied the benefits of, or being subjected to 

discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. 

While administrators cannot make the decision if a student’s mental health condition qualifies him or her as disabled, mental health professionals on and off campus 

can provide that assessment. If a student discusses disturbing thoughts during a 

campus counseling session, the counselor must take precautions to avoid violating 

the recognized psychotherapist-patient privilege. 

To be aligned with our common mission, higher education administrators, including senior student affairs officers, must have the latitude to determine policies from 

the best educational approach. While we certainly understand the importance of 

safe environments as a key element for learning, our primary roles focus on the education of all of our students. Engaging the community, opening our doors for participation in campus events such as theater productions, concerts, or use of our libraries, certainly allows a level of exposure, but one most of us maintain is important. 

When focusing on our students, if students are disruptive—defined as behavior that 

is typically well-addressed in each institution’s student code of conduct—we must 

hold them accountable through progressive discipline. Dangerous or disruptive behavior (including acts and threats of self-harm) can be, and are frequently, addressed immediately by interim suspension policies, followed by appropriate process 

for any administrative or disciplinary proceedings. Common practices and administrative processes give students opportunities to tell their stories. Colleges and universities often include or require consultation with qualified mental health professionals to establish that such students do not pose a potential or immediate threat 

to oneself or the community. 

31

Across the nation, many varied institutions are engaged in common best practices 

that complement current efforts to minimize crises, address situations that do arise 

and support the students, faculty, and staff who may be affected. Examples of such 

best practices include the following: • Creating expanded counseling services or a counselor-in-residence position. On 

some campuses with expanded resources counselors may be on call around the clock, 

have offices in the residence halls, conduct programs, consult with staff, and intervene in crises. • Coordinating the delivery of resources to students with behavioral or mental 

health problems via a student assistance coordination committee. Committees exist 

that develop and implement communication networks and protocols among relevant 

units to deliver seamless services. Through consultations and referrals, members of 

the campus community are encouraged to identify and address potential behavioral 

or mental health problems and to review, update and distribute critical incident response guidelines. • Holding monthly meetings of a crisis intervention committee to review new and 

pending disciplinary cases that go beyond ordinary or routine behaviors. Committee 

membership vary depending on the campus but typically include the chief of police 

or campus safety, housing representatives, university attorneys, human resources 

representatives, on-call staff, dean or coordinator, judicial affairs representatives, 

academic affairs representatives, counseling center staff, and other administrators 

such as women’s center directors or student health services staff. • Assembling a case management group that meets biweekly to share reports, 

even anonymous reports, about students of concern and discuss possible interventions. • Charging the campus police chief or another appropriate campus administrator 

to assemble, train and exercise an emergency response team. Campuses simulate 

disaster days annually to fine-tune the team’s emergency response plan. In addition, 

weekly meetings, including key student affairs officers and campus police, are held 

to review police reports and flag unusual student activities from the previous week. • Creating a permanent incident command centers with full back-up generators 

and computers. This includes implementing an emergency communications system 

for activating the command center and a crisis action team. 

The list goes on and on. The above identified activities summarize just a few of 

the ongoing efforts at a wide range of institution types and sizes, including: large 

and small; public and private, four-year and two-year; community colleges and research institutions. 

It is clear that we must continue to work on improving these systems. While the 

senior student affairs officer often leads crisis planning and response on campus, 

other student affairs administrators participate daily in various aspects of response 

and communication utilizing institutional protocols. Situations are documented and 

occur with great frequency. These situations occur on campuses across the country 

without fanfare and with no media exposure, and result safe outcomes for the students, friends, and family. Actions include interventions that maintain reasonable 

privacy and allow for students to successfully resume typical college activities once 

the presenting issues are addressed, often without the stigma that more public responses may cause. 

As student affairs officers look at old technologies such as bullhorns and public 

address systems as well as the latest technologies of e-mails and text messages, we 

must devise systems of swift and clear communication to give students the information they need to make informed decisions. Still, the decision to communicate and 

what to communicate must be made by well-informed, well-prepared authorities on 

each campus or in each community. We must be sure behaviors outside the norm 

are duly noted and responded to in a timely manner. We must work diligently to 

address communication issues and elicit critical feedback across campus, including 

information from colleagues on the faculty, in other administrative departments, in 

residence halls, and other areas in each of our institutions. 

Even the best-managed institutions cannot completely eliminate the risk of a catastrophe. But by addressing such risks thoughtfully, institutions can increase their 

preparedness. When a concerned parent called me on the morning of September 

11th, he asked, ‘‘How are YOU going to protect my daughter?’’ My reaction was genuine. ‘‘Sir, we have not been able to protect the Pentagon today.’’ You can see how 

it would be irresponsible of higher education to make any promises in terms of our 

ability to absolutely protect the safety of each and every student. 

As Student Affairs professionals play a significant role in establishing and implementing effective systems which successfully address a large majority of situations, 

we still face significant challenges regarding the mental health of our students. 

While we work with the boundaries and expectations of current laws the focus must 

32

be on education and understanding the varied individual student priorities as well 

as the different communities and campus cultures which exist. As educators, we, 

too, are always learning and are committed to improving our institutional systems. 

Our college campuses are places that encourage free and open discussions and intellectual debate. We have come to treasure their open borders and the freedoms 

they give our young people as they develop into productive young adults. We cannot 

begin to close down that access. We cannot change the very nature of these institutions in our attempts to protect our children. According to a recent issue of U.S. 

News and World Report (April 30, 2007) despite the massive numbers of students 

enrolled and the growing diversity of our campus environments, college and university campuses remain among the safest places in America. Student affairs professionals in many roles and responsibilities work tirelessly and partner assertively 

across many institutional lines to contribute to a very positive and productive learning environment for all students. 

Thank you for this opportunity to represent the very important roles embraced 

by my colleagues on campuses across the country and around the world. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you to all of you for your testimony 

and for your participation. 

I would like to pose a question to Mr. Healy and to Dr. Cornell, 

if I might. 

I think the suggestions made here and the suggestions that others have made to other committees sort of tell us that a lot of different things have to be done. There is not a single answer here, 

and you have all alluded to that aspect. 

On this question, Dr. Cornell, of the threat assessments, what intrigues me is the idea that you sort of have an ongoing learning 

process as you engage these students in the effort to eradicate that 

threat or to assess the probabilities and deal with the individual 

cases, as you have done in the Memphis schools. It seems to me 

that you have somewhat of an adaptive model here where you are 

sort of continuously learning and improving about students on campus, be it high school and/or college. 

I notice, Chief Healy, in your statement, you talk about, as one 

of the recommendations, aggressive leads to promote IACLEA’s 

threat and risk assessment tool developed through the Department 

of Homeland Security. You mentioned that you did some of your 

work through safe and drug free schools, and I just wondered: If 

we are here to help, how do we work to build a synergy into that 

process? Because it seems to me that it is a model. The threat assessment and risk reduction is a model that can work both in elementary secondary schools and in college. I do not know if I am 

correct in that, but that is my assumption. I will just ask if you 

might comment on that. You sort of both came to the same conclusion, and I just——

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. 

As to the first part, I want to make sure I make a distinction between the IACLEA threat and risk assessment and then the behavioral threat assessment because there are some differences in the 

two. 

The IACLEA threat and risk assessment tool primarily deals 

with physical security threats, and it has a decidedly all-hazards 

approach, so it deals with a whole spectrum of threats. The other 

point that I made in my statement was that we needed to expand 

the previous studies that have been done on the K through 12 rampage shooting incidents to colleges and to universities. 

33

Last week, I met with the Secret Service and the FBI to solicit 

their assistance in trying to expand those studies that have been 

done, which are very good studies, by the way, but they are not 

campus-focused. So what we are asking them to do is to review ten 

past shooting incidents that have occurred on college and university campuses and to apply the same methodology, and hopefully, 

some of those best practices will be the same, but we believe that 

there are some nuances because colleges and universities are obviously different from K through 12 settings. 

Mr. CORNELL. Let me just say that, when the FBI and the Secret 

Service recommended that schools have threat assessment teams, 

most educators had no idea what they were talking about because 

threat assessment is a law enforcement concept, and it needs to be 

an education concept as well, but schools are learning; schools had 

to learn to develop crisis response plans, and now every school has 

a crisis response plan. Well, prevention is different than crisis response. Prevention starts long before you have a gunman in your 

parking lot. 

So what we need to move schools to is the process of now recognizing that they also need a threat assessment program in their 

schools. Threat assessment ought to be a part of every school’s comprehensive safety plan that starts with prevention and works right 

up through the crisis and the aftermath of a crisis, but with threat 

assessment, we identify kids long before they are armed. We identify them when they are victims of bullying, when they are depressed, when they are developing symptoms of mental illness, 

when they are in conflicts repeatedly that frighten their peers and 

frighten their teachers, and we take a problem-solving approach to 

identify those problems and to resolve them early. 

If you look back at the history of the kids who have committed 

school shootings, both in colleges and off college campuses and communities, we see these kids in middle school having repeated serious mental health and adjustment problems; we see them in high 

school having problems, but what we do not have is sort of the infrastructure and the orientation that they are communicating a 

threat, that that threat signifies a problem and that we need to intervene and work to resolve that problem. 

Chairman MILLER. If I just might—my time is running here. You 

cite that the Memphis City public schools have been able to resolve 

more than 200 threats. I assume that includes a successful referral 

to some support service for problems that that student is encountering. 

Mr. CORNELL. Absolutely. 

Chairman MILLER. So they have built up a base of referral services? 

Mr. CORNELL. They ask us to come and teach them the threat 

assessment model. They adapt it for their urban, large public 

school system. When students made very serious threats, they were 

referred to their central mental health organization within the 

school system. They did an assessment and came up with an individual plan for each student. It might involve the referral to an alternative school, a referral for mental health treatment, conflict 

resolution, a variety of different interventions individualized to 

that student to resolve the problem that they were having, okay? 

34

And they had 200 cases in their first year, all of which they were 

able to resolve. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Mr. McKeon. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank each of you for your testimony. This is a very serious 

issue all of the different kinds of disasters that could confront us, 

and then there are the different sizes of schools and the areas that 

they are located in—their geography. Trying to deal with this from 

Washington, D.C. kind of boggles my mind. 

Could each of you tell us what size your school is? We will start 

with Mr. Healy. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. 

We have 4,200 undergraduate students, 2,000 graduate students 

and approximately 5,500 staff and faculty, so we are a community 

of about 12,000 people. 

Mr. MCKEON. In what kind of a setting? 

Mr. HEALY. We are in a—I call it a suburban sitting on steroids. 

Congressman Holt can attest to that as well. We are also located 

on approximately 600 acres, and we have 160 buildings. 

Mr. MCKEON. Okay. Dr. Kennedy. 

Ms. KENNEDY. At Cal State Northridge, we have 34,000 students 

on 369 acres with about 200 buildings. We are in a suburban setting. The campus is open on various sides with public safety people 

in the entrances but also with temporary people in those entrances 

as well. 

Mr. CORNELL. The University of Virginia has over 20,000 students, but we have trained schools with as few as 20 students to 

schools as large as the Memphis City public schools where they 

have 270 schools. 

Ms. WALBERT. Arcadia University is in a suburb of Philadelphia. 

We have 55 acres, 3,400 students, about 300 to 400 employees who 

are there full-time, and we also own some property adjacent to 

campus but not on that network of 55 acres. 

Mr. MCKEON. Dr. Cornell, you said you have trained schools with 

as few as 20——

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. MCKEON [continuing]. And as large as 270——

Mr. CORNELL. 270 schools with, you know, thousands of students. 

Mr. MCKEON. Each of you come from very large schools. You 

would have the resources to have the safety personnel and the security personnel. A school of 20 people, what could they do in the 

way of setting up a program? 

Mr. CORNELL. In each school, there is an administrator, a principal; there is a psychologist or counselor, and there is a law enforcement officer and maybe a law enforcement officer from the 

community who is a liaison. As long as you have covered those 

three bases, you can have a team that deals with the issues in your 

school. 

Mr. MCKEON. In dealing with your colleagues from around the 

country and in working on these programs, do you feel that we are 

doing a fairly good job of this on these campuses, at these schools? 

Mr. HEALY. As other witnesses have stated today, I think we do 

a really good job of preventing, and we never hear the stories of 

35

prevention. I would say that we do need to take the lessons that 

we have learned from the K through 12 studies, and there have 

been significant resources dedicated to studying K through 12 situations. We have not done the same for colleges and universities, 

and I really urge you to consider funding research by the Secret 

Service and by the FBI so we can take the K through 12 model and 

adapt it for the college and university environment. Our environments are vastly different, and we do not have the same control 

over students as they do in the K through 12 environment, so I 

think it is very important that we understand that, while there is 

work that the Secret Service and the FBI have done on the K 

through 12 issues, we really need to adapt that for the college and 

university environment. 

Mr. MCKEON. Now, the Secret Service and the FBI would be 

looking at what kind of disasters or potential disasters? 

Mr. HEALY. Specifically, we are talking about the active shooter 

situations. The study that I am citing is the Secret Service Safe 

Schools Initiative and the FBI threat assessment model, and those 

models are the models that I suggest that we take an additional, 

more deliberative look at the campus scenario and see how those 

lessons apply. 

Mr. MCKEON. Then the earthquake, the Katrina-type disaster, 

the disaster that happened just recently in Kansas with the tornado, all of those kinds of things would be excluded from that. That 

would also require some effort and some kind of a program to assess those problems, too. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. The IACLEA threat and risk assessment 

tool that was funded by DHS is a great document that really allows 

campuses to take a holistic examination of all of their 

vulnerabilities, and it is an all-hazards approach, and so we believe 

that this document is a very strong document. We also have a campus preparedness resource center that is located on our Web site 

where colleges and universities can download model emergency operations plans. So there have been considerable investments made 

in the all-hazards approach. Of course, we can always do more. 

Mr. MCKEON. Can I have just one short follow-up on that? 

We have about 6,000 just higher ed schools that participate in 

the Federal financial programs and then they go K through 12. Do 

these schools all know of this Web site, of this availability? 

Mr. HEALY. We are doing everything that we can to make sure 

that they know. We represent approximately 1,100 higher ed institutions. Any college or university can access that information. We 

do not exclude any. 

Mr. MCKEON. It is just getting the word out. 

Mr. HEALY. Exactly, sir. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you very much. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Kildee. 

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Healy, I am addressing this question to you as the President 

of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. 

In my city of Flint, we have two prominent universities—Kettering and, exactly 1 mile away, the Flint campus of the University 

of Michigan. 

36

In Michigan, private institutions of higher education do not have 

the authority to establish a Department of Public Safety composed 

of sworn police officers. So, at the University of Michigan, they 

have a fine department of public safety with a number of police officers all trained, all sworn. At Kettering, they do not have that. 

That must vary throughout the country. Princeton is a private institution. Yet, you have your own police department. 

Are these sworn officers? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. My department is what we call a ‘‘hybrid 

department.’’ we are partly—50 percent are sworn police officers. 

The other half are nonsworn public safety officers. 

Mr. KILDEE. They are sworn, and they work for Princeton? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir, they work for Princeton. What you find, sir, 

is, across the country, based on whatever the State law is, the 

State law will dictate whether a private or a public institution can 

actually have sworn police officers at their institutions. 

Mr. KILDEE. You answered my question. I was going to ask that. 

That varies then from State to State. So the State of Michigan 

could authorize that of the University of Detroit, a Jesuit institution, or Kettering. We have a large number of private institutions 

in Michigan. 

So, in your organization then, you would find two types of police 

forces—one for the public institutions and others for the private institutions? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. Really, the distinctions that we make are 

between the sworn officers—the police officers—and the nonsworn 

officers. Again, I think, if you were to take a survey across the 

country, you would see that it is about 50/50. About 50 percent of 

the institutions have sworn law enforcement officers while 50 percent have nonsworn security officers. In fact, some institutions actually contract their security services to companies, to local police, 

to state police. So we are a very diverse community, but we believe 

that many of the tools that we are providing to these institutions 

allow them to enhance their public safety posture regardless of 

whether they are sworn or nonsworn. 

Mr. KILDEE. But as there is a mixture throughout the country, 

in some States, a private institution could have its own department 

of public safety and could have the power to swear them in as full 

police officers? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. I have worked in three States; New Jersey, 

Massachusetts and New York. In each of those States, private institutions were able to have police departments. 

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you very much. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Keller. 

Mr. KELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Cornell, who would you consider to be two or three of the 

leading experts in the country when it comes to threat assessments 

for mass murders if we wanted to hear from those folks? 

Mr. CORNELL. I would prefer to give you a somewhat longer list 

than their credentials and depending on their orientation, and but 

I would certainly speak with folks from the Secret Service and from 

the FBI, who both have excellent——

37

Mr. KELLER. I do not need a list. I am pretty familiar with who 

they are. Have you heard of Dr. Park Dietz? 

Mr. CORNELL. Sure, I know Dr. Dietz. 

Mr. KELLER. Do you recognize him as a world leading expert in 

the area of threat assessment? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. He testified in the John Hinckley case and in the 

Jeffrey Dahmer case. 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. Are you familiar with John Douglas, the former 

head of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. Do you consider him an expert on things like 

profiling and threat assessment? 

Mr. CORNELL. I do not know him as well as Dr. Dietz. 

Mr. KELLER. Okay. Are you familiar with Dr. Jamie Fox at the 

Northeastern University in Boston? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. Is he someone who is familiar and who is an expert 

in this area? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. Okay. Isn’t there somebody at the University of Virginia who is sort of famous? I believe he has a MacArthur Foundation grant, and the name escapes me. 

Mr. CORNELL. Dr. John Monahan. 

Mr. KELLER. Dr. John Monahan. 

Do you consider him a leading expert? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. 

Mr. KELLER. Okay. I am familiar with all of those issues based 

on my prior work in dealing with mass murders, and I have spoken 

in depth with all of them. 

My concern is if we lined all of them up—and by the way, those 

are the four I would consider to be the leading experts in the world 

on threat assessment for mass murders—and I said, ‘‘here are 

some facts about these three students who are freshman at a 

school, and they are all narcissistic, and they are all sort of crazy, 

and I want you to tell me if 4 years from now these four students 

will commit violence,’’ I would submit to you that none of them 

would be able to predict with mathematical certainty 4 years later 

which ones would commit violence who have a pretty good idea if 

violence is going to happen within a couple of hours based on recent and specific threats, but I think it would be very difficult for 

them to predict 4 years later that one of these students, based on 

what they have heard, is going to commit violence. 

Is that fair to say? 

Mr. CORNELL. That is very fair to say. That is profiling as opposed to threat assessment. 

Mr. KELLER. All right. So my concern is that we could spend a 

bunch of money on threat assessment and teaching students and 

school officials in this area, but if the world’s leading experts are 

not going to be able to predict violence 3 or 4 years down the road, 

I am not sure these students are. What I think—and I will be 

happy to also ask Mr. Healy about this—is that the keys for threat 

38

assessment and for preventing mass murders on college campuses 

are three. 

First, there must be systems at places on every single college 

campus that would allow the students and the faculty and the 

dorm advisors to be able to talk to someone about a troubled student in a confidential, anonymous manner so they are not afraid 

of being killed. 

Two, that college must have some system in place that that report of a threat doesn’t fall through the cracks. And, three, that college must have the ability to take action to remove that student 

where appropriate without fear of being sued by that student or his 

family. 

Mr. Healy, do you want to address that? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. I think you just described the behavioral 

threat assessment model. This is the model that we are recommending; this is the model that the FBI recommends in their 

threat assessment process. All of these systems are obviously very 

necessary in our environments. You have to have ways for people 

to speak in confidentiality. That is part of the threat assessment 

model. You have to have ways for everyone in the community to 

identify and then report actions that are troubling for a particular 

reason, and then you have to have an ability to take action to either get help for an individual, or if that individual needs to be removed from the community, to remove him from the community. 

Mr. KELLER. Let us take Princeton, for example. You have a 

freshman sitting in class, and he makes a statement overheard by 

one of his peers that, man, I really hate this teacher. I would like 

to kill him some day. And I don’t like Sally sitting in the front row 

because she is a teacher’s pet; maybe I should take her with him. 

What system would be in place for that student who overhears 

that to report to the appropriate Princeton official? 

Mr. HEALY. I think that that individual would feel very comfortable talking either with their RA or their dean. We have residential college systems, so I think they would feel very comfortable 

speaking with their dean in their residential college or with their 

director of studies. 

Mr. KELLER. Anonymously even, to protect themselves if they 

have to? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KELLER. What system is in place to make sure once that 

resident or official hears it, that it doesn’t fall through the cracks? 

Mr. HEALY. That information would be shared with the dean of 

students office. If we needed to convene a team to discuss that particular action—I doubt if we would in that particular situation—

but if we needed to do that, we have a system in place to do that. 

Mr. KELLER. Finally, would there be concerns about you being 

sued by the student or their family who made that weird sort of 

threat? 

Mr. HEALY. There are always concerns about being sued, but I 

don’t think that stops us from taking action when action needs to 

be taken. 

Mr. KELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Andrews. 

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank the witnesses for their testimony. 

39

Mr. Healy, we are very proud of New Jersey to have a great university like Princeton within our borders, and we thank you for 

being here this morning. 

You talk about your organization’s creation of standards and the 

application of those standards to a certification process, and you 

make particular reference on page 3 of your testimony for the need 

for mass emergency notification systems that have appropriate capacity, security redundancy and reliance to reach your community 

members in a hurry; so a texting system or cell phone system. 

Do you think that this committee—I won’t ask you to testify for 

your organization, but do you think this committee should require 

that colleges and universities receive certification from an organization such as yours in order to receive Federal support? Should 

we require this kind of certification? 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, I believe that our accreditation program is in its 

infant stages, and I would like to think that at some point down 

the line, maybe 10, 20 years, that the program would be mature 

enough to then mandate accreditation standards for all campus 

public safety agencies. As you know, accrediting for institutions has 

been around for a very long time. Our program has not been 

around that long, and I wouldn’t suggest that we jump into mandating it at this early stage. 

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you think States or Federal Governments 

should mandate campuses to have the kind of emergency communication systems that you cite? 

Mr. HEALY. I think that campuses and universities should surely 

evaluate their needs and implement systems that meet all of the 

parameters that I cited in my statement. Obviously I think that is 

a very important initiative. Whether a State should mandate that, 

I don’t really know. 

Mr. ANDREWS. In your years of experience in campus security, 

have you ever run across a situation where the student privacy 

laws have precluded you from gaining or sharing information you 

thought was necessary to protect the campus? 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, we are always concerned about FERPA, the 

Buckley amendment and also the HIPAA provisions. I can tell you 

that there are exceptions for law enforcement emergencies and 

health and safety emergencies in FERPA, and so that hasn’t affected, but I know my colleagues at the universities are often concerned about that. 

Mr. ANDREWS. In your own experience have you used those exceptions to share information with interested parties? 

Mr. HEALY. Absolutely. 

Mr. ANDREWS. Has there ever been a situation where you have 

wanted to use that information but felt precluded because legal 

counsel told you you couldn’t? 

Mr. HEALY. Not that I can recollect, sir. 

Mr. ANDREWS. Dr. Cornell, I am very impressed by what you had 

to say, and I wanted to cite one thing in particular on page 3, talking about mental illness issues for students. You say: Our Nation 

suffers from poor insurance coverage for mental health services and 

from poor communication and coordination among these services. 

Even when we know someone needs treatment, there is no effective 

mechanism to make sure the treatment is delivered and no followVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
40

up to make sure it was effective. College campuses see a substantial number of students with serious mental health problems, yet 

their staffing levels and resources are focused on short-term counseling. 

One of the bills that this committee will be considering is a bill 

sponsored by Congressman Kennedy from Rhode Island and Congressman Ramstad from Minnesota which would require health insurance companies to offer mental health services on the same 

basis on which they offer physical health services. So if there is a 

$500 deductible for a broken leg, there can’t be a $15,000 deductible for someone seeking treatment for bipolar disorder. Do you 

think we should adopt such legislation? 

Mr. CORNELL. I am not entirely familiar with the bill, but I 

strongly support the concept that mental health services should be 

treated with parity with so-called physical. The distinction between 

physical and mental disorders is more in appearance than in substance. The more we learn about disorders, the more we understand that there are both physical and psychological components to 

all of these disorders. 

Mr. ANDREWS. I agree with you, and I think it would be sadly 

ironic if we had a good system in place that identified students who 

are troubled and took appropriate legal action to deal with them 

and then didn’t have the resources to deal with their problems, and 

their problems wound up manifesting themselves in violence. I, by 

the way, do not mean to imply that students who need mental 

health services are always, often or even sometimes violent, but 

sometimes it does lead to this. 

Mr. Chairman, I know that is one of the issues that we are looking at in our jurisdiction. Thank you very much. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Thank you for being with us today. I 

appreciate each one of your testimony. 

Mr. Healy, I would like to start with you. You talked about the 

accreditation program. If you could tell me how many institutions 

have actually applied for accreditation. 

Mr. HEALY. We currently have 11 institutions that are in our accreditation program. The program, again, is still in its infant 

stages. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Could you expand a little bit on some 

of the standards that will be evaluated in your accreditation process? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. The standards, there are approximately 225 

standards. They range from the certification of the officers all the 

way to the crime prevention practices that you are required to implement as a result of the program. So it is kind of a broad range. 

It includes critical incident response, communications systems, dispatching services, training in crime prevention, obviously compliance with the Clery Act. So those are kind of a broad range. 

They are basically broken down into four different categories: administration, operations and patrol, investigations, and then crime 

prevention. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Thank you. 

41

I would like to ask this of each of you, if you would: Given the 

tragic events that took place at Virginia Tech and then the other 

events like the earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes, if each 

one of you could just tell me if you are taking time to reevaluate 

your safety programs, and if so, what you are doing. 

Ms. WALBERT. We certainly are, and I think most institutions are 

using any incident that occurs for an opportunity to review what 

it is we need to know, whether it is about how we communicate 

with our constituents, how we respond to individual situations. 

Each of those items take away sometimes time from doing some of 

the other things that are very important to intervene. At the same 

time, we learn from every situation, and we can build on what has 

come before us on our own campuses, recognizing the communities 

that we are in. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Thank you. 

Dr. Cornell. 

Mr. CORNELL. I am not here representing the University of Virginia. 

Ms. KENNEDY. I think one of the things we put in place are emergency systems, and we also do scenarios related to the shooter incidents or natural disaster incidents. Each of the campuses, the 23 

campuses within the CSU, take part in these activities. We also 

have the crisis intervention piece together with the student affairs, 

the public safety people and others, and there are practice sessions 

that go on. Because we are also concerned about natural disasters, 

each of the departments and areas maintain a supply of water, food 

and safety equipment at the local level so that in the event of any 

kind of a disaster where people have to—are looking for those 

kinds of things, that they can be found in multiple locations. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Thank you. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. Again, I do think that all institutions are 

taking a step back to evaluate their emergency management plans. 

I know that we have done that at my institution. Because I obviously monitor the list for our association, I know that all institutions are concerned about this. We are very fortunate that we have 

in IACLEA a model emergency operations plan so that when institutions are evaluating their own plans, or if they are just starting 

to write a plan, they don’t have to start from ground zero; they can 

use the our model plan and also use our incident command training, which is very important as well. It is important for multiple 

agencies to be able to respond in an effective and seamless fashion, 

and our incident command training allows that, and we are rolling 

that out around the country. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Do you work collaboratively with colleagues across your States or across the country and work on best 

practices and benchmarking and those type things that you would 

do in business? 

Ms. WALBERT. I would say absolutely. NASPA and the other professional associations that I represent today provide all sorts of 

educational opportunities where we share our best practices, we 

challenge one another. We think about the differences that we each 

bring, as were mentioned earlier, in terms of the types of campuses 

that we have, learning about alcohol-related issues, mental health 

issues, the legal aspects. We learn as much from one another who 

42

have experienced other things as we do from conversations and 

educational opportunities. 

Mr. DAVIS OF TENNESSEE. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Cornell, is there a consensus in your field that substantially 

more research needs to be done in violence prevention? 

Mr. CORNELL. There certainly is. 

Mr. SCOTT. The threat to students, is the threat from other students and staff or from the outside? From the events that have occurred, how many have occurred from someone outside of the college community coming in and creating the threat, and how much 

of it is within the college community? 

Mr. CORNELL. Well, certainly both are of concern, and perhaps 

Mr. Healy could address this more definitively than I, but my understanding is that most of the college campus crime occurs from 

outside of the formal campus. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Healy. 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, if you are specifically addressing what we would 

consider an active shooter or rampage shooting incident, of the 

ones we have identified, it is about 50-50; 50 percent have been 

conducted by outsiders, another 50 percent by people who are within the community. I would like to note, however, that the age difference is very variable in the college and university environment. 

Many of the active shooters have been either graduate students or 

much older. 

Mr. SCOTT. Dr. Cornell, we have gone back and forth about your 

ability to identify which individual might in the future cause a 

problem. Everyone with a mental health issue is not a threat to 

public safety. You indicated a difference between threat assessment 

and profiling. Can you elaborate on that? 

Mr. CORNELL. Thank you for bringing this up. This is a very important distinction. All of the experts that Congressman Keller 

cited are important experts, and I think all of them would agree 

with me that threat assessment and profiling are different procedures. Profiling involves looking for long-term predictions, trying to 

see far into the future based on an individual’s background and 

characteristics. 

The FBI’s own profiling unit, including John Douglas, concluded 

that profiling was not appropriate for school shooters, but they recommended threat assessment, which is a more immediate procedure that identifies individuals who have identified themselves by 

virtue of making a threat or engaging in some kind of threatening 

behavior. 

We have much more success at distinguishing individuals who 

have made threats and how serious and dangerous they are than 

individuals who are involved in profiling. Dr. Deitz, for example, 

has a threat assessment business that he operates, so certainly he 

endorses the concept of threat assessment. So this is an important 

distinction and one that we emphasize in our training. 

Mr. SCOTT. In high schools bullying is a major issue in terms of 

violence prevention. Is that as much a problem in college? 

Mr. CORNELL. Bullying probably peaks in middle school and declines through adolescence, but bullying, social bullying, is still a 

43

very prominent issue in colleges. Individuals segregate themselves 

into social groups, individuals come to feel alienated and withdrawn, and we see the development of adult mental illnesses in 

those years that complicate the bullying problem. 

Mr. SCOTT. Expulsion in high school is often counterproductive. 

Is it as much a counterproductive issue in college? 

Mr. CORNELL. It certainly is for the students. 

Mr. SCOTT. What about for public safety? If you expel a high 

school student, they are out in the street and can cause as much 

aggravation out there. Is there as much of a problem for public 

safety for the college students if you expel too often? 

Mr. CORNELL. Absolutely. Expulsion is sort of a short-term solution for the school, but it is not a solution for the student or the 

community as a whole. 

Mr. SCOTT. What problems happen when you expel people unnecessarily? 

Mr. CORNELL. The American Psychological Association’s Task 

Force on Zero Tolerance looked at expulsion research and found basically it is associated with declining achievement and a higher 

dropout rate among the individuals that are expelled. It does not 

improve the safety of the school or the climate in the school, so it 

is not a very effective solution. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Healy, you mentioned communication. Some things cost a lot 

of money, some things don’t. Do most college student have cell 

phones? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. Virtually all have computers. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. You can send a message out instantaneously; is that 

right? 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. Most of the systems that are currently on 

the market are instantaneous. 

Mr. SCOTT. If you send out an alert like something at Virginia 

Tech, what would the alert say, and what would the students do? 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, I don’t want to address specifically what they did 

or what they could have done there. I know in our situation we 

would try to send information to advise individuals what to do as 

a situation unfolds. Again, these messages—and as situations 

evolve, that is why it is so important to have a system that you 

can push out information as quickly as possible because of repeated 

information and updated information. Again, this would serve as a 

way to provide information so that people can take steps to do 

what it is that you need them to do, but also to control rumors and 

try to maintain a sense of order on campus. 

Sir, unfortunately, there are a lot of companies in the wake of 

the very tragic incident of Virginia Tech, a lot of fly-by-night companies out there, and it is very unfortunate. That is why it is very 

important for colleges and universities to understand what the features of those systems are so that they are not throwing their 

money away. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Boustany. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

44

First a few comments and then a question. It seems to me that 

we don’t want to create a Federal bureaucracy to deal with this, 

and given the diversity of so many institutions and size and locations and so forth, having those institutions develop multidisciplinary plans that are very comprehensive, that incorporate elements from the community would be important, as you have all 

mentioned. 

You have all given very excellent testimony and answered some 

very good questions with very informative answers. 

Certainly plans would include threat assessment, prevention, response, and oftentimes with plans, when they have to be implemented, they don’t really work as well as everyone would hope. We 

saw this in my home State of Louisiana after both Hurricanes Rita 

and Katrina. And scenario planning and so forth, exercises I think 

are also very important. 

One question I have, and Mr. Andrews raised the issue of mental 

health, every community is plagued with the lack of mental health 

resources across this country. We all know about the disparity in 

the way insurance treats it. These issues we are going to try to 

deal with as we go forward. 

But it struck me as I was listening that our universities and colleges have a resource that we may be underutilizing, and that is 

virtually all have psychological departments, and are those psychological departments being utilized in a more extensive way in a 

counseling process; as you look at your plans and go through prevention and so forth, are you using those resources to the fullest 

extent on campus? 

Ms. WALBERT. I think it is important that there is a distinction 

made between the role that the psychology faculty play in teaching 

and the role we talked about in counseling. It is very clear a faculty member who is an expert clinical psychologist not be in a 

counseling relationship with a student that they are teaching. On 

a campus like ours, our psychology program is very strong, and 

when we have had emergencies, we have used the expertise that 

exists on that psychology faculty to help us think about other resources and relationships that we have, but we do not use them directly for the counseling role with the students. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. I would ask that that might be considered and 

look at possible best practices, share your information, because it 

may be worthwhile. It just seems to me that this is a resource on 

our campuses that may be underutilized in this effort. I do recognize the difference between research and teaching versus clinical 

psychology, but just about every campus does have clinical psychology and counseling, master’s programs in counseling, which is 

a clinical discipline. 

It just seems to me that that is an area that we need to look at 

a little bit more and maybe share some best practices. 

Ms. WALBERT. Sir, if I may, I do believe that we really need to 

be very cautious on that matter, in large measure because of the 

confidentiality of the relationship if the faculty member is also in 

a position to grade a student. The systems that we need need to 

be built around the network for the student free from that academic pressure. So using them as resources and experts is critical 

45

in terms of any of the faculty on our campuses, psychology, including other areas as well. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. I understand that potential conflict, but it seems 

to me that there should be a little bit more investigation into—any 

campus as to how those resources could be used. 

Dr. Cornell, do you have any comments, being a psychologist? 

Mr. CORNELL. Yes. Obviously you are correct that there are some 

academic psychologists who would not be prepared or trained to do 

clinical counseling, but at the University of Virginia we have clinical psychologists who also work in a clinic that does provide counseling and clinical services to the student population and the general community, so it can be worked out. There are complications, 

as Dr. Walbert mentions, but I think in many universities the clinical psychologists on the ground also are involved in some capacity 

with their mental health services. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. 

Dr. Kennedy. 

Ms. KENNEDY. Within the CSU we have a comment that we consider to be odd students, and we don’t mention the student’s name. 

And we bring together public safety, counseling, people from the 

clinical psych area to talk about student A, for example, and to 

bring together all the information that we have, and then to try to 

identify what would be a plan relative to that, and then that gets 

carried out in a designated way depending on the degree of threat. 

I think that is quite common. I know within the CSU it is a common practice. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. 

I would just say, given the paucity of mental health services really nationwide and from community to community, we ought to leverage everything we have as we look at this effort. 

I thank you all. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Ms. Clarke. 

Ms. CLARKE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Americans once had a sense of security in the basic institutions 

that were important in their lives. We used to think our churches 

and our schools were safe. Recently the tragic events at Virginia 

Tech have yet again reduced whatever semblance of sense of safety 

we had left. 

Equally as tragic is the daily violence encountered by students 

in our inner-city schools. In New York City alone, which is where 

I am from, there are a reported 654 serious incidents in schools 

categorized as persistently dangerous schools. These acts of violence point to the larger problem of school safety both at the secondary and postsecondary level and points to the importance of the 

creation of threat assessment teams of mental health professionals, 

educators, social service workers, law enforcement officials and others in key strategy in averting potential dangerous incidents. 

In fact, since the Columbine incident in 1999, much of the school 

safety literature has stressed the importance of schools forming 

these types of broad-based threat assessment teams to analyze 

threats and campus safety. However, schools seem to be a bit reluctant not only in the creation of such teams, but also on the creation 

and implementation of student alert systems. 

46

I want to direct my questions to the entire panel. I am looking 

at what has happened in New York City and how we can engage 

our educational communities in emergency preparedness and sort 

of expecting the unexpected. After 9/11 we had a lot of schools in 

the area of the World Trade Center, and after 9/11 it seems as 

though that level of consciousness has still not quite awoken. 

For instance, New York City passed—well, the mayor basically 

passed a public school cell phone ban, so the types of messaging 

that you would talk about in the event of an emergency is not 

available to public school students, particularly high school students, and there is a concern about whether that technology is good 

in a public school setting, or does it present a larger threat in 

terms of violent interactions during the school day or after with 

gang members and things of that nature, sort of creating that balance. 

But how do we create a consciousness within the educational 

community and surrounding communities around expecting the unexpected, using threat assessment as a tool in an urban environment? Can I just ask you folks, particularly those of you who have 

larger environments in which you work or have had that experience? 

Mr. HEALY. Ma’am, I believe that one of the ways that we do 

that is through professional associations like my own, by creating 

a sense of the awareness of what is available and making it easier 

for institutions to develop their emergency management plans. I 

don’t think that there is any institution out there that doesn’t want 

to engage in emergency management planning, it is just such a 

daunting task, and that is why resources like we attempted to provide in IACLEA are very helpful to help facilitate and move the 

process along. 

I do think that it is a critical role for the professional associations to reach out to their membership to ensure that they understand. It is also important for us to work together, and that is why 

we are constantly trying to develop closer relationships so that I 

can present at a NASPA conference and talk about the importance 

of emergency management, and someone at NASPA can present at 

one of our conferences, talking about working together with the 

student affairs professionals. So I think it has to be a collaborative 

approach. 

Mr. CORNELL. Schools really have a tremendous burden, and 

with No Child Left Behind, many responsibilities that have to do 

with academic achievement and accomplishments there, and that is 

their first priority, and so it is sometimes difficult to provide them 

with the time, the energy and the funding to think about crisis response and threat assessment, which I see as two separate components. 

The Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, that funding is really 

critically important to schools being able to implement programs. 

In almost every school division that we have gone to, we have gone 

to 12 States, gone to hundreds of different schools, they use that 

Safe and Drug-Free Schools money to do their threat assessment 

training, to do their bullying prevention. And when that money is 

threatened, those programs go away. 

Ms. KENNEDY. Yes, I wanted to respond, too. 

47

Within the CSU, given that we have almost half a million students that we are serving, and we also provide services to our local 

education, K-12 educational systems as well, one of the things that 

we do is we do provide violence, antiviolence training within the 

public schools. We do principals’ training in the same way. And everyone within the system is trained to try to prepare themselves 

for disaster. 

The difficulty always is that you are prepared for the last disaster, and that when you mention the ability to plan for the unexpected, it is just not possible. You can put all the tools together, 

and you can bring that emergency preparedness action and crisis 

management to the event at hand, but I think it is very difficult 

to anticipate some of the things that actually do happen. 

Ms. CLARKE. I think sort of key to responding is to have a tool 

that enables people to act. New York City decided to ban cell 

phones in its schools, and there has been a real debate around 

whether, in fact, it facilitates being able to address an emergency 

or it creates a crisis situation for those who would use it as a tool 

in order to promote some sort of violent action. Any response to 

that? 

Ms. WALBERT. I would just say that we have had to communicate 

all the decades we have been around. Thinking about the best way 

to communicate is essential. We used to hang signs. That was all 

we had. Now we have other tools. But to assess whether or not 

they will accomplish the primary purpose in that particular case, 

that needs to be done in advance. That is how we can prepare to 

think about which tools we would use under which circumstances 

and what makes the most sense. 

Mr. HEALY. I would just add, ma’am, that, of course, no one 

method is best. I think it really has to include several different 

methodologies and modes of communication. Some of those methods are as simple as hanging a sign, but obviously we have to continue to evolve as the technology evolves. We have to continue to 

add layers on so that we are then able to communicate. 

I think obviously with the issue around cell phones in K-through12 schools, that is an issue that has to be resolved. But cell phones 

are not the only way. I think K-through-12 schools are much smaller than colleges and universities, much more contained. I think 

just the word of mouth is a very effective tool as well. 

Chairman MILLER. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Heller. 

Mr. HELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank everyone here today. Great discussion today. I 

certainly do appreciate your input. 

I wanted to direct some of my questions towards Ms. Kennedy. 

How large did you say your campus was again? 

Ms. KENNEDY. Right now it is 34,000 students. 

Mr. HELLER. Thirty-four thousand students. You had to live 

through earthquakes, and I understand how difficult that can be. 

I went to the University of Southern California. But for that reason 

I am looking at some of your issues and comments on emergency 

preparation plans. How long would it take you to evacuate your 

campus if you had to do so? 

48

Ms. KENNEDY. It would depend very much on the time of day, the 

day of the week. 

Chairman MILLER. Maybe take a week at the wrong time of day. 

Ms. KENNEDY. Depends on the traffic. I couldn’t really say. We 

have evacuated the campus at different times over utility crises 

where we had no electricity. We evacuated—we have done it over 

mudslides and other activities, and usually it has been around—my 

own personal experience, it has been around 4:00 in the afternoon, 

which means they can evacuate the campus, but not the area. 

Mr. HELLER. Right, right. I didn’t live through the Rodney King 

riots at the University of Southern California campus, but my sister-in-law did, and under that scenario they did try to evacuate the 

campus and had a difficult time even in the middle of the afternoon 

trying to get students off the campus. It was in the middle of 

finals. They were in the library, they were on campus, they were 

in their fraternities or sororities. Very, very difficult for them to get 

that evacuation and get that completed, and very concerned. 

In your emergency preparation plans, have you determined how 

long it would take to contact 100 percent of your students under 

an emergency situation? 

Ms. KENNEDY. In an emergency situation we actually have a system of public address on the top of every building on the entire 

campus and including in the dorm areas, and so we can do a public 

address telling people where to go. We have automatic systems 

that go to the cell phones and go—not the cell phones, to the computers, everybody’s individual account, giving them instructions. 

And then we have teams of people that will be located—that will 

move immediately to particular areas to tell people what to do. 

Residential people have one set of issues, the classrooms have another. 

Mr. HELLER. Very good. 

Mr. Healy, you mentioned, or it has been mentioned, obviously, 

the technology of the laptop, cell phones, and I realize, as you mentioned, that no single technology is going to be a fix-all. But I will 

tell you as you move forward in this, and I think it is an intriguing 

idea, I would think that you could expand that. For example, as a 

parent sitting here with a child in the elementary school right now, 

that parent would also be notified. But not only students on campus, but those parents. 

I think that is one of the biggest concerns of what came out of 

the incident at Virginia Tech, was the lack of communications. I 

think if not only were the students, but the parents at the same 

time—I would love—if my child’s elementary school today had to 

be evacuated, I would love to have that ring on my cell phone right 

now saying come pick up my child. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. One of the factors that we will be asking 

our peers and our other campus public safety executives around the 

country as they look at purchasing such a system to consider is 

whether parents should be added to the system. I know, in fact, the 

system we have at Princeton actually started in the K-through-12 

environment primarily for parents and has evolved into a system 

that is used in the higher ed. So I do know that those systems are 

used widely in K through 12. 

Mr. HELLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

49

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Yarmuth. 

Mr. YARMUTH. I wanted to pursue the issue of the diversity of 

campuses a little bit. I come from a district, metro Louisville, and 

we have eight or nine different campuses, none of which I would 

say resembles Virginia Tech in the sense that they are very selfcontained, very few residential students anywhere. And I worked 

at the University of Louisville for 3 years, and it seemed to me that 

the approach to campus safety there was more of like a community 

police force, a community approach. 

So I am interested in the idea that we are using a K-through12 model to talk about safety when, at least looking at the variety 

of campuses in my community, it appears that it resembles more 

of a workplace model than it does an educational setting. Does that 

make this exercise meaningful in any respect, because I understand at least three of you come from large campuses. I don’t know 

about Arcadia. We have campuses that you really couldn’t call 

them campuses, institutions that are in high-rise office buildings. 

So it is exactly like a workplace setting. 

So I would like you to respond to how applicable these standards 

are. 

Mr. HEALY. Yes, sir. That is why I think it is so important that 

we expand the previous studies that have been conducted in the Kthrough-12 environments to include campuses. I know I have said 

that several times because I am really committed to trying to make 

this happen. In fact, I mentioned that I met with the FBI and the 

Secret Service to gauge their interest in expanding their studies. 

But I do think that there are some particular nuances in college 

and university environments that may make some of the recommendations and some of the behavioral threat assessment models distinctively different in college and university settings, so that 

is why I really urge you all, as you consider funding for the Secret 

Service and the FBI or whomever, the COPS bill, that we set aside 

some money for this research because I think it is vitally important. 

Ms. KENNEDY. I would just like to say that for the CSU we have 

small residential campuses as well as primarily commuter campuses. For Cal State North, for example, of those 35,000, only 2,200 

are living on campus. The rest are living around, or they are commuting in. That is why I mentioned earlier on the time of day. 

But what our emergency preparedness has done as a system is 

to identify what are the needed systems that have to be in place 

depending on what that campus looks like, and that is what we 

have put in place. When we do the scenarios, the first one that was 

done on the possibility of a shooter, active shooter, was done at San 

Francisco State, which is an urban setting. We will now repeat that 

in a residential setting and in a mixed setting such as the one that 

I am most familiar with. 

So we are very conscious that a setting does create a different 

kind of response. 

Mr. CORNELL. Again, there is an important distinction between 

the crisis response and threat assessment. Crisis response, the 

buildings matter a lot, and the location and what you are going to 

do, but that is an immediate situation. Threat assessment is preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:36 Dec 10, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\FC\110-36\HED135.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK
50

vention, and there the buildings matter less, and the people matter 

more. 

So when someone is engaged in threatening behavior, what is 

important is that you interview that person, you interview the witnesses, you contact the teachers, and you communicate among your 

staff. So it is more person-oriented. 

Now, threat assessment actually originated for workplace violence and for protecting our President, who is moving all over the 

world. So the issues of geography have been dealt with and overcome, so I wouldn’t want to think that because we have got a 

model in K-through-12 schools, that we can’t adopt it to colleges, 

because it has been used in tougher environments even than colleges already. 

Ms. WALBERT. I would just add that the community you mentioned is critical on different size campuses, and understanding 

what the community that the institution resides in expects from 

that relationship is essential as well. We have many commuter students that we would have very different expectations of how we 

would contact them than the students that live on campus. Many 

institutions, over 4,000 institutions, there are many different ways 

to pull those groups together and identify the best way to communicate and what the expectations of the students, the parents, the 

faculty and the staff that are there really are. 

Mr. YARMUTH. I guess I am just curious about how much the fact 

that it is an educational institution changes the safety dynamic in 

many of these institutions we are dealing with. 

Ms. WALBERT. I think that gives us an opportunity to engage everyone in that environment, particularly at the collegiate level, 

educating that students have a responsibility for what happens in 

the community, to make that contact anonymously or otherwise if 

they are concerned about a peer or someone else. It gives us that 

leverage. 

Very few of our missions actually say we will keep students safe. 

We talk about education, we talk about the focus on the long-term 

citizenship of those students. We do want it in a safe environment. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here. I think it has been an excellent discussion. You have talked—maybe this is to the whole panel, but I 

think, Dr. Cornell, you have been speaking about the crisis response versus threat assessment. Is there a sense of proportionality 

here? If you were to look, all of you—if you were to look at what 

campuses are doing, would you be interested in knowing how much 

more in resources has been put into security measures in buildings 

versus thinking about the threat assessment, and what would that 

proportionality be? How would it be if I went to my campus, several major campuses in San Diego, for example, and asked them 

to tell me about those issues and whether or not adequate resources were being put into either one? How would you assess 

that? Is it equal, or is it in truth something else? 

Mr. CORNELL. I would say most people think about crisis response when they think about the active shooter incident because 

that is very vivid and emotional, and they spend their resources on 

51

that, and it is a more expensive process because hiring security and 

equipment. 

Threat assessment is much less expensive. You train your staff, 

and they continue to do threat assessments. But I would say it is 

probably 90 percent focused on crisis response and security and 

much less on the sort of early prevention threat assessment. 

Mr. HEALY. That is why I think it is so important for us to have 

this conversation, because one of the things that we try to tell our 

peers is that you do need an all-hazards approach. We need to consider all of the risks that we potentially face. Congressman Clarke 

was mentioning earlier it is hard to get people to imagine the unimaginable. That is what I am here to do. I have to help my institution, my peers have to help their institutions, imagine the worst 

possible scenarios. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can plan or that you commit resources for every possible scenario, but you have to look at the likely, more probable scenarios and plan, and I do think that obviously 

this conversation is an important conversation and one in which we 

hope that people will begin to think not just about critical incident 

response, but also about behavioral threat assessment. 

Ms. WALBERT. I would agree with Mr. Healy, but I wouldn’t 

agree necessarily that everything is unimaginable. Many of the 

things that we deal with are very real. Dealing with the individual 

students in advance, reinforcing that connection, educating peers 

as well as faculty is essential in helping identify where those 

sources of problems may be. That may be where many of the resources need to go, and we continue to escalate. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I guess these resources, is it mostly 

in research or working within the institutions? Because I think, 

Mr. Healy, you mentioned that you monitor other institutions and 

what they are doing. I am interested in the obstacles that they 

face. Is it a mindset issue or a resource issue? 

Ms. WALBERT. I would argue——

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. What is our role? How would you like 

to relate to it in order to raise the consciousness, whether it is the 

research or something else? 

Ms. WALBERT. Pulling together research is very valuable to us, 

but not necessarily what we use on the ground day in and day out. 

And understanding that the decisionmakers have to think about 

the very real things that are happening in that environment at 

that point in time, whether it is after an earthquake or when a student comes in and says, I am worried about the person that was 

sitting next to me in class, that decisionmaking ladder has to be 

well-informed and clear and understood, and I think sometimes it 

gets fueled by other outside agencies, and we are trying really hard 

in being very effective at identifying the most important elements. 

Ms. KENNEDY. I think what has changed as a result of our continued investment in both public safety and in the crisis management and threat prevention has been a coming together of the different units of the university in ways that had not happened before. I think when I first came into higher education, the last thing 

I would have thought is I would be meeting with a counselor, a 

public safety person, someone who is an expert in crisis management and facilities and talking about student issues and faculty 

52

issues and putting together counseling following events. But that 

is very common now on campuses. It certainly is very common 

within the CSU and within California, and it is between public and 

private agencies, between the police department and the local area, 

and when they are called by our police. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. If I could interrupt, is it correct to 

say that when it comes to a credible threat, that we are using more 

tools at universities, and that personnel there actually know what 

to do with that threat and to reach out in some ways? 

Ms. KENNEDY. Increasingly they know what to do with it, and 

they know how to reach out to the community because they have 

been practicing this over and over again. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Loebsack. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

This has really been a pretty fascinating discussion. I appreciate 

all the time that you folks have put into this and the wonderful 

questions of my colleagues. I taught at a small college for 23 years, 

Cornell College as opposed to Cornell University. But also in my 

district is the University of Iowa where in 1991 we had a mass 

shooting, and whenever something like what happened at Virginia 

Tech happens, it really does cause a lot of trauma in the area, certainly at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, but at the smaller 

institutions such as Cornell College in the area. I actually had a 

little bit of e-mail contact with Cornell’s college chaplain when the 

Virginia Tech incident happened. So I am doing my best to try to 

stay in touch with folks in the district about these issues. 

I do want to also thank Dr. Walbert and Dr. Cornell for your responses to my colleague Mr. Boustany’s question about sort of utilizing local campus resources and the extreme caution. As a former 

academic myself and knowing clinical psychologists who are also in 

academics, I am very aware of that distinction that has to be maintained there as well. 

But I have kind of a practical question, and maybe it is more related to profiling than threat assessment, because I am still sort 

of grasping what the difference is, not being an expert in this area. 

I served on an admissions committee at Cornell College a number 

of times for a number of years, and I know a lot of institutions sort 

of have the same procedure that Cornell has, and that is not everyone who applies goes before that committee. A lot of people are 

automatically admitted if they meet certain admissions criteria. 

And there could be a number of people obviously who have mental health problems, and I thank you very much for drawing attention to that concern, or might be a threat of one sort or another 

to themselves or to their colleagues, and so they are not assessed 

in any way, shape or form. They may have had problems in high 

school, but we don’t know about that when they get to the college 

level. They are admitted automatically, and, unbeknownst to administrators or faculty, they have these problems. 

So my question would be is there any way that we could—should 

we know that information before they are admitted to college? And 

then if, for example, they come before a committee, should a committee be aware of that information, and to what extent should the 

committee take that into account? And should there be a pipeline 

53

of sorts where the information about someone’s proclivity to violence in high school might follow that person through a career? 

I guess at least the two of you can answer that question, maybe 

Mr. Healy as well. 

Ms. WALBERT. I will give it a shot. I think that there are lots of 

anecdotal experiences that tell us that students, individuals that 

have had trouble in the past can be very successful citizens, and 

we have to walk that tightrope very, very carefully. However, I 

think when we have information that indicates that a student either would have difficulty in the transition to the institution, the 

transitional issues are significant, they have been in an environment where something else has erupted, and it is similar, it is very 

worthy of those contacts to try to ascertain whether or not there 

should be any question about that participation level. 

I would much rather have that conversation at a point in time 

where as an educator I can help that student later on make the 

most of those opportunities, and we can talk about all sorts of mental health issues, and I can name any number of people that are 

successful citizens that have worked through that. 

So I think that it is a slippery slope, and while we must be careful for the community, we need to attend to the individuals as well. 

And as educators we are in a great position to be able to do that. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you. 

Dr. Cornell. 

Mr. CORNELL. There is not a checklist or a profile that we can 

say, oh, don’t admit these students because they would be violent. 

We really aren’t in a position to do that. Naturally, any admissions 

committee, I assume, would be concerned if a student has a criminal history or history of violent behavior and would have to weigh 

that in making a decision. 

But I think much more important is how do they function on the 

campus. Do they show signs of disturbance, trouble, and can we 

reach out to them soon enough to sort of deal with the problem 

when it is at a lower level? I think our colleges need more resources and more orientation toward that approach. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Right. 

Did you want to say anything, Mr. Healy? 

Mr. HEALY. The only thing I would add is in trying to make a 

determination on an individual who is coming in as a freshman 

and their criminal background, most of those records would be 

sealed, and we wouldn’t have access to them anyway. So I agree 

that this is obviously a touchy issue, a very slippery slope. That 

doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking about how we evaluate our 

students before we allow them into our institutions. Clearly we 

should learn some lessons from this very tragic incident at Virginia 

Tech. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman MILLER. I have six people remaining to ask questions, 

and we are going to be out of here no later than 10 after. So the 

extent to which you can restrict yourself so your colleagues can 

have a question. 

Mr. Bishop. 

54

Mr. BISHOP OF NEW YORK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try 

to be quick. 

Dr. Walbert, I used to be a NASPA member, so I thank you for 

your leadership. 

Ms. WALBERT. Excellent. 

Mr. BISHOP OF NEW YORK. One of the things we focus on in this 

committee is student cost, rapidly increasing rates of tuition, and 

we have had testimony before this committee that ties increase in 

student cost to a proliferation of nonteaching staff on college campuses. 

I note in your testimony that you talk about the key roles the 

student affairs professionals play, how they facilitate student 

learning, how they help maintain a healthy environment on the 

campus. Could you talk about how colleges need to make those 

kinds of judgments when they are constructing their budgets and 

where they put their staffing resources? Could you talk more about 

the role that student affairs professionals play? 

Ms. WALBERT. It is essential to think about what the expectations are of the students and the parents of the students coming 

to a given institution and determine whether or not the services, 

the programs, the activities are consistent with those expectations. 

If you have a more mature population, they may not expect campus 

environment activities and so forth. 

The issue of counseling, however, is one of those things where it 

is very important to define what it is that you are going to provide. 

I could have dozens of psychiatrists on staff and probably address 

many issues with students, but thinking about the best utilization 

of the resources I have every year every time I have resources at 

hand to think about is critical for me as an administrator. I need 

to think about whether or not I can utilize a full-time counselor 

more effectively than I can utilize some other resource, and that 

stone doesn’t get upturned any given year. We deal with it constantly to make the most of those resources. 

Mr. BISHOP OF NEW YORK. I take it you would agree cutting nonteaching staff is not the way to hold down tuition costs. 

Ms. WALBERT. I certainly wouldn’t support that. 

Mr. BISHOP OF NEW YORK. I will just ask one more question. 

Dr. Cornell, you make several references to the Safe and DrugFree Schools. I am going to assume you are aware that the President’s budget recommended the total elimination of that program 

for fiscal 2008. I take it that is a recommendation that you would 

urge this Congress to overrule. 

Mr. CORNELL. I think it would be a disaster for our schools. 

Mr. BISHOP OF NEW YORK. Thank you very much. 

I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. I have just a quick question also, which is in 

terms of threat assessment, I mean contact with the court system 

certainly would seem like a red flag for a current student; again, 

I am not talking about precollege. 

Maybe this question is for you, Mr. Healy, in terms of just 

whether or not—particularly when you have got students who don’t 

live in the jurisdiction where the campus is, and if there is trouble 

back home or a probate court finding like there was with this 

55

shooter at Virginia Tech of some mental issues, I mean, that does 

seem like a role that the Federal Government—and we have the 

NCIC system for crime information where there could be ways of 

making sure that actual dispositions of conduct either that broke 

criminal laws or resulted in some type of civil findings are transmitted to people who need to assess threats, and whether or not 

that system really works now, or whether or not that is something 

that Congress should be looking at. 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, I think NCIC obviously works very well, but the 

problem is that when you have students who are engaged in activities around your campus, generally you will find out through your 

relationships with your local agencies. If an individual who is a 

student at your university is engaged or involved in a situation in 

another State, it is a low probability, because normally when students are getting in trouble, they don’t identify themselves as, I am 

a student of Princeton University. So it is very rare we would find 

out those situations. 

So I think it is willing to discuss—it is good to have the conversation about how we monitor that. Again, I think it is a slippery 

slope. We understand that our students are citizens of the world, 

and obviously they engage in activities sometimes that aren’t the 

best. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they shouldn’t belong in 

the campus community. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Again, I am not suggesting if someone gets in 

trouble back home, that that somehow endangers their status, but 

certainly it would seem like something the campus would want to 

know about, again, some of the indicators that would suggest someone is falling into trouble in terms of mental health issues or behavior issues. 

Ms. WALBERT. If I could address that just a moment. It may not 

be on a specific matter, but we meet with our local judicial officers. 

We meet with the judge in our township. He knows what our expectations are on our campus and how we support the things that 

he does. So while we may not be talking about an individual student, when he is dealing with an individual, he knows how the institution expects it to be addressed as well. I think that is a great 

collaboration with off-campus resources as well. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

In a somewhat different light I heard Dr. Kennedy mention 

about the natural disaster that occurred. Fortunately, it was when 

no students were at the school. I am a graduate of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and it is also in my congressional district. 

Although it is on a little different subject, as you know, there was 

the fire at Seton Hall where several students died. The cause was 

certainly suspicious. It was finally determined that it was started 

by several young men. 

And I am wondering whether in your overall assessment of safety for children, for the students rather, have you and all of you that 

are associated with schools—very quickly, had that been addressed? I know we passed some Federal legislation and all that, 

but what is—since we are talking about safety in general, most of 

it is about the Virginia Tech, but how are you all coping with that 

56

situation of the potential of fires and fires being started and sometimes maybe even a mental instability from a student? 

Ms. WALBERT. I would just say that any of the aspects of behavior that students exhibit that is inappropriate or in violation of a 

code of conduct is an opportunity for us to send a loud message. 

On our campus any tinkering with any kind of fire safety feature 

is a very severe violation of our code of conduct, and students get 

that message loud and clear. We have an opportunity to do that. 

There are other issues such as alcohol and drugs as well. But fire 

safety is one of those things that we can explain very clearly to students, and utilizing the existing code of conduct is one mechanism 

to do that. 

Ms. KENNEDY. I would just concur with Dr. Walbert on that. I 

think that the CSU operates a similar system. We do say in California that we have four seasons, fire, flood, earthquake and summer. And so we are conscious of various kinds of acts of natural 

disaster. 

Mr. HEALY. Again, I would just add that the approach that 

IACLEA recommends for responding to catastrophes and critical 

incidents is an all-hazards approach, so I think in every emergency 

management plan you will see particular pieces that address fire 

emergencies. 

As you know, we are from the same State, and New Jersey has 

very stringent requirements for colleges and universities. 

Mr. PAYNE. Right. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Holt. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you. I will be very brief because we have little 

time, and also because I have been in and out of this hearing, and 

I don’t know what I have missed. You have probably answered 

most of the questions. I just want to at this late time in the hearing welcome Mr. Healy and say how proud Princeton is of his work. 

The one specific—by the way, how proud we are that we have the 

president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement. The one specific question I have that I believe hasn’t been 

answered, but you can correct me if it has, is just how much, Mr. 

Healy, do you think we can learn from looking at the work over the 

last half dozen years of secondary schools, because you have recommended learning those lessons and transferring them to the colleges and universities. 

Mr. HEALY. Sir, I believe that we can learn a lot from the Kthrough-12 studies that have been conducted, and I think primarily 

it is the behavioral threat assessment model. Again, I think we 

need to take a deliberate look to ensure that the model as currently 

written is completely transferable. 

I am not so sure, and in my meetings with the FBI and the Secret Service, they are obviously concerned that we just don’t take 

one model and just plop it over and expect that it will operate the 

same way. But clearly the behavioral threat assessment model is 

a good model that we need to consider studying. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you very much. I look forward to learning more 

from Dr. Cornell. I was impressed with your different view, I think, 

of what we need to do, and I thank the witnesses very much. 

57

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Hare. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just have two questions—one for you, Dr. Cornell, and one for 

Dr. Walbert. 

Dr. Cornell, not all of the threats, as you know, are the same, 

and you emphasize that school officials should not look at them as 

such, and just a two-part question. 

What are some of the elements used to assess the severity of a 

threat, and how are the students’ privacies protected while you are 

doing this assessment? 

Mr. CORNELL. Okay. Those are both good questions. 

We have a detailed decision tree in which we classify threats as 

transient, serious substantive, or very serious substantive. And 

there are a number of factors. You mostly have to consider the context in which the threat is made, and we have an interview protocol in which students are interviewed about what did you say, 

what did you mean by that, how do you think the other person took 

it? And then we have a similar interview that we do for witnesses 

to the threat and for the recipient of the threat. 

So there is a process involved to sort of understand what they 

meant by that, and then the more serious we think it is, the more 

we involve law enforcement and mental health persons. So there is 

a level at which every child then would get a mental health assessment which would look at their history of violence and their proclivity for violence, and then there would be a law enforcement investigation in which we might search the child’s locker, the backpack, maybe get a search warrant and go to the child’s home. And 

as you know, there have been many cases where a kind of threat 

assessment has been done where they have gone into children’s 

homes and have found weapons in their bedrooms, for example. So 

there is a progressive series of steps that we take. 

Now, in terms of privacy, FERPA allows, in a health and safety 

emergency, to share information, and that is very important that 

they understand that FERPA, even as currently written, allows in 

a health and safety emergency to share information. And we include that in our training so that they understand, in a case where 

it rises to a level of a very serious, substantive threat, that information is not confidential, and so we do not promise confidentiality 

when we interview a student and we contact parents. 

On the college domain, obviously, there are some additional hurdles there to be dealt with—that is one of the adaptations that you 

need to make—but that, I think, can be worked out. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you. 

Dr. Walbert, just one last question here. 

You mentioned that the resident assistants are typically trained 

to recognize and address interpersonal conflicts and signs of mental 

health. What specific training are they given to prepare them for 

dealing with troubled students, and would you recommend that 

anything be added to that training, given what we have seen? 

Ms. WALBERT. The training for resident assistants varies from 

campus to campus, but in most cases it is quite extensive; it is 

done over a series of times. Often, right before the academic year 

58

begins, there is an intensive span of maybe 2 weeks of educational 

programs and so forth, and then there is ongoing training, very 

typically. 

The types of things that might be specific to this are emergency 

protocols, understanding how to deal with certain types of emergencies and so forth, but a great deal of time is spent on helping 

the individual student think about how they are going to interact 

with their peers, build the relationships, form the team, the community that they live in so that they will get the kinds of information when there is a concern about a student. 

The reality is that students are more apt to say something to another student than they are to a senior administrator of some sort, 

and we need to have the systems in place, which most campuses 

do, to use that liaison very effectively. 

So, in tooling them, we do things like, behind closed doors, we 

practice; we role-play; we give them a number of different kinds of 

experiences so that the students who are working for us are very 

much a part of the community that the other students are in. 

Mr. HALE. I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Altmire. 

Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Walbert, again, I wanted to actually follow-up on what Mr. 

Hare was talking about. 

What does a resident assistant do when they see or they hear 

through another student—or, you know, a living companion or 

whatever the case may be—that there may be an issue with a student? What is the next step that takes place after that? 

Ms. WALBERT. There may be a number of decisions that that individual has to make. They may consult with a professional staff 

member; they may reach out to the student to find out what is 

going on. Any number of times during the course of any given week 

or month, I may leave a message for a resident assistant and say, 

‘‘How is ‘so-and-so’ doing?’’ because I have gotten something from 

a parent or from someone else who is concerned about that individual. So we team together, and I do not supervise the R.A.s directly. I am a vice president at the same time. I might have that 

conversation with a professional staff member who lives in a residence hall or with an undergraduate student who serves as resident assistant. 

There are different options. It could be personal/private where 

you walk into a room and ask them how they are doing. It could 

be escorting them right down to the counseling center themselves, 

because the student trusts them. 

Mr. ALTMIRE. What is the level of interaction that the R.A. would 

have once a decision is made at some point that there really is, 

maybe, an above-average situation that is taking place here, something out of the norm? 

Ms. WALBERT. It would vary depending on the specific circumstances and where the trust levels existed with the resident assistants and the professional staff at that point. It might also vary 

given the time of day. We had a situation that occurred at noon, 

and the resident assistant was off at class, and it was all the professional staff who dealt with that particular situation. And we 

59

later got back to the resident assistant about what had transpired 

and what they could do to help build the community on their floor. 

Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you all for your time. 

Lastly, given what happened at Virginia Tech recently, has there 

been any thought to modifying the training that R.A.’s receive 

based on that one case, or do you feel like we are moving still in 

the right direction? 

Ms. WALBERT. I do not have the specifics of that particular situation, the response at that moment in time, but I think all of us are 

very well aware of the focus that those residential students play in 

our system. They are so valuable to us. We talk to them at the beginning of any given year, we interact with them in a variety of 

ways, and we recognize them at the end of each year. At the same 

time, every bit of training that we can give them might make a difference in a critical moment. 

Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Thank you to the members and to the members of the panel for 

your very thoughtful discussion this morning. 

I know, on behalf of Mr. McKeon and myself, our goal in this 

hearing is to see how we can be helpful, and I think that many of 

your comments today were very, very constructive. The one thing 

I might ask is, now that you have been through this experience and 

you have made a number of recommendations, I think also the 

question would be what it is we might do to make campuses safe. 

I know some of you have worked through Homeland Security; you 

have worked through the Justice Department; you have worked 

through the Department of Education. 

How is it that we might make that process a little bit simpler 

for access to those resources and whether or not they are there in 

a fashion to be—I mean, you have painted a pretty comprehensive 

picture here of the kinds of resources that you have to assemble on 

a campus to really deal with this problem, whether it is an earthquake or it is a shooter incident or everything in between, and 

sometimes we do not necessarily align resources with that comprehensive responsibility that campuses have, even of K through 

12. 

We obviously look forward to Governor Kaine’s report from the 

commission there, and we will be pulling this together to see how 

it is that we might be helpful. But if you have some suggestions 

along those lines, I think that would be helpful, because you work 

with these programs from the other end. We know they are a great 

idea when they leave this committee. Now, sometimes they get 

screwed up out there. So that would be helpful if you could call 

upon that experience and relay that to the committee. I would appreciate it. Thank you very much. 

With that, the committee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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