Crisis Communication

One issue will be the university's perceived failure to communicate more quickly with students about the shooter and perhaps lock down the campus earlier. It was close to 10:00 AM when the university administration sent e-mails to students warning them of a gunman on campus, telling them to stay in their rooms and away from windows. At this point, it may have been too late. The question arises, why this communiqu? was not issued earlier. In this two-hour window, Cho reloaded and proceeded to a classroom building where broader mayhem ensued.

Related to this are concerns over the two-hour gap between the first set of shootings in the dormitory and the more extensive shootings that occurred a few hours later in the classroom. Had the university administration acted more quickly and decisively, perhaps authorities could have intercepted and thwarted the killer. Other colleges are fine tuning their crisis communication systems in light of the Blacksburg shootings. For example, four days after the Virginia Tech event, Vanderbilt University implemented an emergency text messaging system.

Further, postmortem focus will be on the university's failure to heed warning signs in this troubled student. Cho had received counseling from mental-health professionals. There had been complaints from female students. Fellow students and suite mates considered him an odd loner. His writings contained disturbing images of violence. It is easy to look back now and ask why the warning signs were not heeded, but these are reasonable questions.

Negligent Security Claims

Whether these lay the foundation for successful liability claims alleging “negligent security” against Virginia Tech remains to be seen. A survey of legal experts suggests that plaintiffs will have an uphill battle in successfully pursuing claims against the university. (That does not mean that some will not try.) No litigation or recovery will bring back a parent's dead child, but once the dust settles it would not be surprising for litigation to begin. In America, there must be a deep pocket that pays!

Scott M. LeMay, Managing Partner of LeMay + Lang, says, “The lessons are always the same. The risk manager did not expand the scope of threat analysis sufficiently.” Recent history tells us what can happen, LeMay notes, but we never want to concede that “it can happen here.” In his view, that was the failing of the World Trade Center risk manager, who recommended insuring the exposure to only half its total exposed value simply because the whole shebang “couldn't come down in one occurrence.”

Other risk professionals believe that the university failed to address the shooter's earlier antisocial and hostile behavior. According to press reports, he had stalked and harassed other students and made menacing gestures to staff. He had intimidated one professor to the point that she told the administration she would quit unless it did something about him. The university removed him from class and put him on a sort of “self study” plan. (Ironically, had he called someone a racial or sexist epithet, he likely would have been expelled quickly.) Most employers would suspend or fire an employee who was hostile or threatening to coworkers; most high schools and elementary schools show zero tolerance toward hostile behavior but–for some reason–Virginia Tech seemed to ignore it.

Another risk manager says, “I hope that universities and colleges take a more assertive stance in dealing with students who are hostile or potentially violent. Perhaps if a student exhibits such behavior, they should be expelled or temporarily suspended until they have had one or two independent psychological evaluations that conclude they don't pose a risk to themselves and others.”

Others counter, though, that suspending or expelling the Virginia Tech murderer would not have guaranteed that he wouldn't have returned to the campus anyway. On a daily basis, miscreants subject to restraining orders still commit murders and assaults. It is a major failure of an organization's risk management policies to turn a blind eye to those (students, employees, etc.) exhibiting hostile and threatening behavior to peers. It seems like most workplace murders (other than robberies) are committed by current employees rather than by former workers.

Other risk management issues abound in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy. These include …

Time Element Losses and Reputational Risk

Business interruption loss may also loom for Virginia Tech from declining enrollments. There is a potential reputational risk to the university, which has enjoyed ascendance in its national visibility ever since the athletic exploits of football quarterback Michael Vick.

Prospective students must ponder personal risk and whether they are interested in enrolling in Virginia Tech or returning to the school. My youngest son was a high school senior at the time of the shootings. Many of his best friends had been accepted to Virginia Tech and had just returned from an “admitted students' weekend” two days before the massacre. Many had been leaning toward mailing in their deposits and committing to Virginia Tech, since they were weighing acceptances from other colleges. After the shooting, however, we may forgive some students if they think twice about whether they want to become a Hokie. This is a function of their own assessment of personal risk; student indecision risks potential financial issues for the university if there is a material slip in enrollments.

If anything, the Tech campus may be safer than ever as the university over-compensates to shore up its security systems. Campuses may be made safer in the wake of April 16th. Colleges and universities will dust off their crisis management plans and tweak them. They will reassess their campus security and communication systems with the aim of making it less likely that a Blacksburg-type event will reoccur. These are some of the positives that may flow from Blacksburg, though in no way do these measures redeem the magnitude of the loss and tragedy that befell that campus on April 16th.

Campus Security: A Sign of the Times

Reflecting on my own college days in the 1970s, in hindsight it now seems to have been an age of innocence. The scene was not exactly the Waltons or John-Boy, but campus security was not on the radar screen. Resident assistants were reviled, but it was not uncommon to leave dorm rooms unlocked and to have casual attitudes toward access to dormitories and suites. There were no phone systems and emergency call-boxes posted every fifty feet. When I now visit my college-age son on his campus, I am surprised by the pass cards and other security systems that he uses without thinking to gain access to various buildings that I had free access to 30-some years ago.

Such are signs of the times. We live amidst the backdrop of events like Columbine, 9/11 and now, Blacksburg. Colleges and universities must pay attention to security and liability issues, balancing these at the same time with student privacy issues and not acting overzealously every time a student acts out of the norm.

Time will allow the courts and experts in torts to sift through the risk management and liability issues flowing from Virginia Tech's response to the shootings. What is certain is that claims and lawsuits will be made. As one droll wit observed, “Death is not the end — there remains . . . the litigation.”

Kevin Quinley is an insurance executive in the Washington, D.C., area. You can reach him at [email protected] or at his web site, www.kevinquinley.com.