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Blog ArchiveCounting Minutes
Graham Spanier
We spend a great deal of time at universities preparing for the very worst that man or nature might throw our way. Nowadays we worry not only about coping with the crisis but also about how to communicate about it. With the rapidity of communications, we are cognizant that the world is watching — and counting.December 1, 2008 Counting? Yes, counting the minutes from when we first heard of an issue to when we alerted everyone. There is no argument about the need to communicate, but every crisis is different, and sometimes it is unclear what one should say, and when. At Penn State we have a Foodborne Illness Committee and an Avian Flu Committee. There is a committee that plans for emergencies at our huge football stadium. There is another group that plans for emergencies at the local airport, one of the busiest in the state, which is located on university land. The biggest potential problems are rehearsed by the Emergency Management Group, consisting of administrators representing every relevant part of the university. The day-long exercises they practice throughout the year range from what to do during a prolonged East Coast power outage in the dead of a severe winter storm to how to feed and care for tens of thousands of students, faculty, staff, and local residents in the case of a major international flu outbreak. Will all critical employees actually leave their families and homes and show up to keep campus heating systems running and food services operational? University employees must think about everything from how might you convert the ice hockey rink into a quarantine site in a deadly flu outbreak to how we feed laboratory animals and pets in the middle of winter. One scenario on the mind of every college president in recent years is the campus shooter. On the day of the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech, news reporters around the country called other universities to ask how safe the institution was against a similar tragedy. Most reporters asked questions that were largely irrelevant to real safety. Why don't schools have card access to all buildings? It's not so simple when you have several hundred buildings, an environment that values open access, and class assignments that change each semester. Universities, when you think about it, are typically designed to welcome thousands of visitors on to campus — for conferences, athletic events, concerts, public lectures, and visits to our museums. We don't want to keep them away. What about locking down buildings? Again, it's not simple if there are several thousand entrances collectively accommodating tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff each day. And does one need to be locked in or out? The text-message alert system idea has boomed into a major business. When there are the rare shootings on American campuses, the news networks always question how long it took for a cellular phone text alert message to be issued. This scrutiny encourages accountability, but I also worry about unintended consequences. If there are nuances or if the advice depends on where you are, how do you communicate the variables in a short text message? Might we unwittingly promote undue panic? Will students flock to the site of an emergency to see it, rather than move away from it? Do we confuse people if we send out an early alert that is wrong and then have to correct it shortly thereafter? No one doubts that safety should be an important priority on our campuses today, but the communications part will continue to challenge us. |
