In the wake of campus shootings such as the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Northern Illinois, the university’s Division of Student Life launched the Student Behavior Consultation Team late last month to develop support plans promoting student health and safety.
“Since Virginia Tech, one of the things that came out of that was ‘Are we connecting the dots?’,” Charles Beale, director of the Center for Counseling and Student Behavior said. “The young man was troubled and institutions need to connect the dots when behaviors come to the attention of faculty, staff and students.”
Beale said many other institutions are creating or have created similar committees. The university received help and guidance from Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have similar programs.
The committee has six members who were selected based on the role their offices play with students. Members include Beale; Joan Casaletto, dean of students’ executive secretary; Kathryn Goldman, director of the Office of Student Conduct; Skip Homiak, executive director of Campus and Public Safety; Kathleen Kerr, director of Residence Life and Dawn Thompson, Dean of Students.
The group’s role is to develop action plans, perform risk assessments, and develop strategies to protect the safety and rights of students and the university.
Faculty, students and administration are also instructed to look for changes in individual student behaviors.
“Faculty will see if a student’s behavior has changed,” Beale said. “They may have become disruptive.”
Thompson stressed confidentiality and sensitivity within the student recommendations. There are a number of ways each situation can be handled depending on the seriousness of it, she said.
“We could work with students and refer them to support or take them through student conduct and have them suspended in severe cases,” Thompson said. “We can also decide nothing needs to be done if the student and campus is safe, we’ll trust Student Services to assist them.”
Thompson said counseling will be one of the first suggested ways to go about helping students.
“The primary referral source for students is other students,” Beale said.
Student recommendations are followed by those from staff, faculty and parents.
The SBCT recently launched its Web site to help the university community deal with these types of situations and concerns. In the upcoming months, the program directors hope to speak with faculty departments to explain the program and how it can benefit the community. They will then begin to reach out to coaches and student groups.
“Eventually it will be part of faculty and staff orientation,” Thompson said.
Dr. Jenny Lambe, an associate professor in the communication program was skeptical of the program.
“I can understand the concern, but its so subjective I would be concerned that students would get referred who shouldn’t be and students who need to be refered would not be,” she said.
But she does believe the program is helpful and could provide guidance to faculty members facing a student issue.
“Right now I have no idea who I would go to, so if there was some procedure in place as to how to go about this is probably a good thing,” she said. “It must be used with caution.”
Sophomore Megan Rabian also approached the idea with a mixture of positivity and skepticism.
“Its probably good to look out for kids like that but it could be taken the wrong way like with profiling,” she said. “Overall it will probably be good as long as its handled correctly.”
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