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Experts: Assessments Key To Stopping Violence

May 16, 2007

By Michael Hardy

Colleges and universities would profit more and spend less by concentrating on threat assessments of potentially violent students instead of focusing on crisis response, a congressional committee heard yesterday.

Experts on violence, security and college administration cautioned against overreacting to the rampage at Virginia Tech because campuses are generally safe.

Dewey G. Cornell, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the University of Virginia, said that threat assessment focuses on identification and intervention early by school, mental health and law-enforcement officials.

"Prevention can't wait until the gunman is in the parking lot," Cornell told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee. He is director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project.

Noting that most middle and high schools employ the assessment-prevention approach, Cornell said that it could be easily transferred, with some modifications, to institutions of higher education.

The gunman who killed 32 students and teachers at Tech was paranoid and delusional, underscoring that it was "a mental-health rather than a school [response] problem," Cornell said.

Campuses average about 16 homicides a year, the panel was told.

"We must not overreact to rare events," Cornell said.

Jan Walbert, vice president for student affairs at Arcadia University, agreed. "There are no guarantees; the horrific events at Virginia Tech could have happened anywhere in the nation," she said.

The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, 23, a Tech senior from Northern Virginia, had been determined by a court to be a danger to himself because he was suicidal. Cho was committed to seek outpatient treatment, but it is uncertain whether he received treatment.

The committee, headed by Rep. George Miller of California, held the meeting to examine best practices for improving college safety, emergency readiness and response plans, student services to prevent violence and notification procedures in cases of disaster.

He hoped it would "trigger a national dialog" over issues raised by the shootings.

Miller said he awaits the report from a commission appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine looking into the gunman and recommending better security and notification in the wake of the April 16 shootings. The eight-member panel, headed by W. Gerald Massengill, former superintendent of the Virginia State Police, is holding a handful of hearings around the state but appears to be focusing more on mental-health problems and services than on response issues.

Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-3rd, said that there are still emotional scars from the Tech massacre, but the hearing could be the first step toward restoring normalcy at the university.

Steven V. Healy, public safety director at Princeton University, also recommended the model of behavior threat assessment. "We can learn a lot from kindergarten through 12th grade" that have successfully used such an approach, he said.

"No one-size-fits-all" solution is realistic because of the variety of campus settings, said Healy, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

Luanne Kennedy, former provost of California State University at Northridge, summarized the challenges faced by many administrators.

"The difficulty is that you always are planned for the last disaster; it's very difficult to anticipate some of the things that happen," Kennedy said.

Contact staff writer Michael Hardy at mhardy@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6810.