COVID-19 Pandemic Response
Authors:   , McCollough Tamara F. , Levine Bruce A. , Smith-Budhai Stephanie 
Published: August 2024

When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, public safety departments at four-year institutions of higher education in the U.S. were vulnerable. This vulnerability was because of the limited time they had to initiate their pandemic response to help protect their campus communities, and the need to create or revise institutional emergency response protocols and guidelines. The abrupt onset of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak highlighted the importance of adequate planning by public safety departments to respond to pandemics. Public safety officials at institutions of higher education assumed a moral obligation to ensure the safety and welfare of campus community members and an added responsibility to keep those members informed, prepared, and safe. After the initial onset, public safety officials continued to struggle with developing adequate responses to the public health emergencies presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the overcrowding of hospitals, supply chain shortages for frontline workers and emergency responders, and inconsistent communication of information. The problem in this multi-site case study is that at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak institutions of higher education were faced with four main challenges: (a) a lack of guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and local and state public health agencies (e.g. health departments) on how to respond effectively and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic within their campus communities; (b) many institutional response plans were not adequate for addressing a pandemic; (c) not having time to implement their institutional plans; and (d) campus public safety officials had to shift from their normal roles toward COVID-19 mitigation within their campus communities. A multi-site case study was conducted to explore how public safety officials responded to COVID-19 at their respective institutions during the period from March 2020 to September 2021. The timeframe noted represents when the COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in the U.S. by the WHO and spanned the first eighteen months, showcasing the response of planning and response efforts of public safety officials at four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of public safety officials at four-year institutions of higher education that were involved with their institution's pandemic response efforts. Data were collected from conducting virtual interviews and documents collection to provide insights into the phenomenon. Data were also collected from the researcher's notes within the research journal that was kept during the interviews. The goal of this study was to gain insights that would assist public safety officials and their institutions with understanding the approaches that worked and what did not work effectively in their COVID-19 response to inform their future efforts during similar health emergencies. Keywords: COVID-19, campus law enforcement, emergency response, institutions of higher education, pandemic response, public health emergency