DCJS Today Newsletter
Campus Threat Assessment Training Planned for April
Virginia’s colleges and universities will soon have access to newly developed training in responding to threats of violence on campus.
DCJS’ Office of Campus Policing and Security (OCPS), and Dr. Dewey Cornell of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education have collaborated to develop the training, which will be offered on a regional basis on April 14, 21 and 28. Dr. Cornell heads the Youth Violence Project at U.Va. and has done extensive research on school violence. He and his staff created the threat assessment model now in use in public schools throughout Virginia.
The training is part of the extensive, ongoing follow-up to legislation passed by the 2008 Session of the General Assembly and signed by Governor Kaine. The legislation, which took effect last July 1, was a response to the shootings at Virginia Tech in April, 2007. It requires all of Virginia’s public colleges and universities to establish campus violence prevention committees and create formal threat assessment teams.
The law specifies that the teams and committees should include representatives of law enforcement, student affairs, counseling services, mental health professionals, residence life and other elements of campus communities.
The violence prevention committees are charged with creating and implementing policies and procedures concerning threatening behavior, and the resulting reporting, assessment, intervention, and resolution of such behavior. The threat assessment teams are responsible for implementing the process outlined by the violence prevention committees.
To begin the process, DCJS, UVA, and the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) convened a College Threat Assessment Forum last summer to learn what schools are doing now to respond to threats of violence, what they consider to be “best practices,” and what their training needs are.
Seventy-three people attended, representing 38 public and private colleges and universities from all over the state; among them were police and security officials, Vice Presidents, Deans and Directors of counseling centers. They spent a day hearing presentations on campus safety and threat assessment and participating in focus groups tasked with deciding how to deal with hypothetical threat situations. They also responded to a survey asking questions about the status of their efforts to comply with the legislation and the areas where they would like assistance from the OCPS.
Dr. Cornell and his staff, and the OCPS, used the ideas and information gleaned from the forum, as well as input from national experts and a review of relevant literature, to develop guiding principles and best practices for threat assessment teams, creating a model for colleges and universities to use in creating the teams. Their work forms the basic content of the trainings.
Donna Bowman, Manager of the Virginia Center for School Safety and the Office of Campus Policing and Security, noted that additional training on law and policy issues related to preventing campus violence has also been offered.
“We’re also planning companion training on the legal methods and techniques which arise when colleges and universities identify and attempt to respond to threats of violence on campus,” she added.
“There are clearly some misunderstandings about what information can be shared and what actions can be taken to deal with threats of violence on campus,” she added. “We hope this companion training will help clarify these issues for the assessment teams.”
The project is being supported with funds provided by VDH and the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program.
For further information about campus safety and the upcoming trainings, visit the website at http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/vcss/?menuLevel=8 or contact Donna Bowman at (804) 371-6506 or Steve Clark at (434) 947-2938.