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Recommendations And Implementation: What The Review Panel Suggested

April 13, 2008

By David Ress

Virginia needs to pay closer attention to people in mental distress, and colleges and universities need to improve security, the review panel that investigated the mass murder at Virginia Tech reported. A year after the 32 deaths, here's where the key recommendations stand:

Communication

Recommendation: Universities and colleges need a system to link troubled students to medical and counseling services.

Action: Virginia Tech says it hired three case managers and three counselors to make sure services are available. The university said it has refined its "Care Team," which identifies and responds to students at risk. The State Council of Higher Education said it is not tracking what other state schools have done. Recommendation: School officials, mental-health providers and health-care agencies need to share information about troubled students. Action: The U.S. Department of Education last month issued new regulations to make clear that schools will not be penalized for reporting concerns about students feared to be a risk to themselves or others.

Campus alerts

Recommendation: Schools need to ensure that alerts include explicit information about threats and are disseminated as quickly as possible

Action: Virginia Tech has launched the VT Alert system to send information via text message, instant-messaging services, phone calls and e-mail to 20,400 subscribers. Other schools also have launched alert systems. Recommendation: Plans for canceling classes or closing campus need to be part of emergency operation plans. Action: Virginia Tech's emergency plan now includes these.

Early detection

Recommendation: Incidents of aberrant, dangerous or threatening behavior should be reported immediately to a threat assessment group, which should act promptly to protect the university community.

Action: Virginia Tech has formed a threat assessment group. A new state law requires all colleges and universities to form one. Recommendation: Professors should be required to report aberrant, dangerous or threatening behavior to the dean; annual training for residence-hall staff should cover reporting requirements for such behavior. Action: Virginia Tech now has protocols that professors are to follow, and residence-hall staff now receive training. Recommendation: Colleges and universities should tell parents if a student ends up in counseling. Action: Virginia Tech now does this.

Mental health

Recommendation: The way judges and mental-health officials evaluate people to be hospitalized for treatment needs to be reformed.

Action: The General Assembly broadened the grounds under which someone may be committed. Virginia has long said that only people at imminent risk to themselves or others could be committed, but the standard now will be whether people are at substantial risk in the near future. It also says local mental-health agency officials and the psychiatrists, psychologists or other independent professionals who advise a judge on whether someone should be committed should attend the commitment hearing or be available by phone. Recommendation: Clearer standards are needed for involuntary outpatient commitment — the kind of treatment ordered for gunman Seung-Hui Cho about 16 months before the shootings. Action: New guidelines require local mental-health agency officials' presence at commitment hearings and reinforced sanctions for people who do not comply with orders. Recommendation: The mental-health system needs to reach out more effectively to people before they reach a crisis requiring commitment — for instance, by increasing the number of crisis clinics for those who might need medications adjusted. Action: The state is adding $41.7 million to its mental-health budget, to be used to beef up emergency services and hire more case managers, outpatient clinicians and clinicians who specialize in children and young people. Recommendation: Copies of commitment orders for mental-health treatment should be filed with the Central Criminal Records Exchange, to be checked for when someone applies for a gun permit. Action: Now required.

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or dress@timesdispatch.com.