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As a direct result of these conversations and case studies, Duke and Stanford University forged a reciprocal agreement to guest host each other's website should either university lose its Internet servers. Stanford, like many California institutions, is further along in emergency planning because of the higher risks of earthquakes and wildfires. From a practical standpoint, it also makes sense to collaborate with an institution on the opposite side of the country, lest a natural disaster or terrorist attack cripple an entire region.
"We are doing really well in terms of how we alert the Duke community in the case of an emergency," says university secretary and vice president Richard Riddell, who chairs the two-year-old emergency-management council and serves as a kind of air traffic controller for monitoring real and potential safety issues around campus. (Monte Brown is Riddell's counterpart at the Duke University Health System, which consists of the medical school and School of Nursing, research institutes and centers, and clinics and patient-care operations.)
But Riddell notes that "we still have work to do to let students, faculty, and employees know what their role is, and what they need to do, not just in an emergency but as part of their day-to-day routine." For example, an Associated Press report earlier this year found that college students are slow to sign up for emergency text messages. To increase the likelihood that Duke students will sign up, campus safety officials sent letters to parents encouraging them to make sure their sons and daughters took this simple step.
Paul Grantham, assistant vice president for communications services, says that no single method of notifying the entire Duke community can be effective. "Our communications strategy is built on redundancy," he says. "We have low-tech options, like the public-address system or having residence-life staff knock on doors, and we have high-tech options, such as text messaging and RSS feeds. One of the things we want to track is how people first hear that there is a drill or an actual emergency, so we can refine and improve how we notify people."
Technology allows instantaneous communication, but speed has its drawbacks. When an undergraduate student died in his dorm last year, student-affairs staff members and police officers arrived on the scene within minutes of receiving a 911 call from one of the young man's friends. By the time they got there, students had begun gathering outside the dorm, and were already texting messages to their friends and acquaintances about what had happened—or what they had heard had happened from second-hand sources. University officials were compelled to call the family on the spot, without knowing all the facts, because details of the student's death (accurate or not) were already being disseminated. Grantham says that ensuring messages are both timely and accurate can be a delicate balancing act.
"We send out what we know as soon as we know it," he says. "But in an emergency situation, we aren't going to know everything at once. So when we send out those updates, we want to be very clear about telling people what we know to be fact, as well as telling them what we don't know." Case in point: Last spring a steam line ruptured at the Levine Science Research Center (LSRC), killing longtime Duke employee Rayford Cofer. In addition to e-mail messages sent immediately to members of the campus community, and an alert message posted on the front page of the Duke Today website, the emergency website posted updates, providing details on how the building's systems were being tested and repaired, and informing LSRC employees when it was safe to report back to work.
Protecting students
In theory, college is a time for young adults to express their independence, become responsible adults, and learn, through trial and error, how to contribute in positive ways to the larger community in which they live. In practice, that's not always a smooth process.
In the 1960s and 1970s, college students began objecting to the notion of in loco parentis, whereby institutions imposed curfews and social standards on young people away from home for the first time, the better to keep them from harm. Rather than view such rules as benign safeguards, students argued that such measures were infantilizing and implied a lack of maturity and good judgment. From both legal and moral viewpoints, most colleges and universities concur that in loco parentis is not the ideal model for helping teenagers become autonomous adults.
In the last two decades, though, students who chafed at in loco parentis became parents themselves. With their own children heading off to college, these parents want assurance that safety precautions and safeguards are in place to protect them from harm. And even though the trend in higher education is for more robust student-affairs staffs and student-life services, coordinating those efforts is a challenge. At Virginia Tech, gunman Seung-Hui Cho's unstable behavior and actions leading up to the shooting had come to the attention of officials in judicial and student affairs, the counseling center, and university police, but none of these agencies shared or escalated their concerns with counterparts across campus, believing (incorrectly) that to do so would be a breach of student privacy.
At Duke, these departments are in constant communication. On the student-affairs side, Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs and dean of students, convenes a Monday-morning meeting during the academic year at which various student-affairs officers review events from the previous week. At any given meeting, between fifteen and twenty people attend, including deans who oversee East, West, Central, and off-campus student life; representatives from judicial affairs and fraternity and sorority life; an alcohol- and substance-abuse-prevention manager; and members of the residential-life and housing staff.
Wasiolek '76, M.H.A. '78, LL.M. '93 begins each meeting by asking for an update from the person just coming off his or her shift as dean on call—a position that rotates among staff members, assuring that there is a student-affairs staff member available twenty-four hours a day to address urgent or emergency situations that involve students.
At an early-September meeting, the first since this year's first-year students arrived on campus, the report includes a faulty smoke detector in a residence hall (emergency maintenance was notified), a call from a resident adviser wanting to know if it was permissible for students to smoke a hookah on the outdoor patio (as long as they weren't smoking anything illegal, she was told), and a distraught young man who took an overdose of Motrin after his girlfriend broke up with him (he was taken to the emergency room and referred for counseling).
Other cases before the group involve more comprehensive supervision. A second-year student who had earned a reputation for partying hard her freshman year had assured her academic dean at the start of fall classes that she was now on the straight and narrow. But according to the young woman's residence coordinator, she had shown up for an afternoon dorm meeting with beer in hand, and at the weekend's tailgate party before the football game, another dean had spotted the woman in full party mode.
In this case, as in others involving students of concern, the young woman's name is added to a database maintained by Amy Powell, the student-affairs case manager. A position created just this year, the case manager coordinates the efforts of student-focused campus entities to ensure an integrated approach to addressing a spectrum of needs a student might have.
For example, the loss of a parent or close family member could have an impact on a student's academic performance, his mental health, and even his financial-aid package should the family's income fluctuate. In a situation like that, Powell would collaborate with the student's academic deans, who alert the student's professors to the situation; professional staff in Counseling and Psychological Services, to which the student might be referred; and the financial aid and registrar's office.
First-year students receive the most supervision, including faculty members living in residence halls, academic advisers, resident advisers, residence coordinators, and first-year advisory counselors. Housekeeping staff members have also been trained to watch for clues that indicate unhealthy behavior—the frequent presence of vomit in a bathroom used by women, for example, could indicate a student struggling with bulimia.
"One of the things we tell parents during orientation is to contact us if something doesn't seem right," says Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs. "Sometimes when parents have concerns—their son or daughter hasn't called in a few days and they usually call every day, or they sound sad on the phone—they don't want their children to think they are interfering. We can maintain that parent's confidentiality while still checking to see if everything's okay. We might ask the resident adviser to stop by the student's room, or ask that student's roommate how things are going between them. We take elaborate precautions to mitigate risk."
Senior Daniel DeVougas is in his third year as a residence adviser (RA). He says he likes being a mentor and sounding board for first-year students who are juggling new academic and social pressures. "RAs play a unique role because students see us as one of them," he says. "I've had students complain about the party scene, and I can tell them from firsthand experience that not everyone drinks, and that there is a social scene that involves people getting together to cook or make music, not just to drink."
There is a somewhat predictable arc to the experiences and emotions first-year students encounter, he says. "Students arrive at Duke ready to take on the world. They know they want to be premed or prelaw. They all go to the party scene early on; some keep going while others focus more on their studies. Then around midterms, they get a C on a paper or a test and they think their world is about to end. I am there to reassure them that this happens to almost everyone. I can tell them where to go for help. One of the most powerful things about being an RA is that I'm not pushing policy. I'm providing a positive role model."
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