Since March 2021, school district leaders have been developing and implementing plans to spend their "ARP dollars," that is, the historic $122 billion allocated from the American Rescue Plan to help districts recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic. The money, also referred to as ESSER funds (Elementary and Secondary School…

Hundreds of U.S. schools will supplement fire drills and tornado training next fall with simulations of school shootings. In response to the December shootings by an intruder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, several states have enacted or are considering laws that require more and new types of school safety drills, more…

The importance of communication during a school crisis has not changed in the 21st century. What has changed--and quite dramatically since 1999--is the way people communicate. Social media tools are now used in some form by 100 percent of all four-year universities in the United States as a way to reach students, according to a 2011 University of…

On April 16, 2007, Seung Hui Cho, a livid and mentally ill student, shot to death 32 students and faculty of Virginia Tech, wounded many more people, and then killed himself. This incident has impacted college and university campuses nationwide in efforts to seek mentally disturbed students and help them, to have effective emergency teams, as well…

An analysis of eleven state task force reports prompted by the tragic nature of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 revealed that all shared a primary theme: no "single best way" to protect American college and university campuses yet exists. These documents, individually and collectively, make it clear that contemporary complex learning…

School shootings have generated great public concern and fostered a widespread impression that schools are unsafe for many students; this article counters those misapprehensions by examining empirical evidence of school and community violence trends and reviewing evidence on best practices for preventing school shootings. Many of the school safety…

Ten months after the massacre at Virginia Tech, colleges of all kinds continue to weigh campus-safety concerns. How can they help troubled students? How should they respond in emergencies? Preventing some campus incidents may involve luck, but responding to them effectively requires planning. Like residential colleges and universities,…

Within an incredibly short period--perhaps less than twenty-four months--the need for emergency preparedness has risen to a higher level of urgency than at any other time in the history of academe. Large or small, public or private, higher education institutions are seriously considering the dual problems of notification and communications…

The gun smoke had barely cleared from the lecture hall at Northern Illinois University where last week a former graduate student had executed five students before killing himself when local and national scribes began speculating about a new trend in mass murder American-style. The "Chicago Tribune" Web site, quick with coverage of the…

In a residence hall on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, two students had been shot to death. A couple of hours later, the tragedy multiplied by horrific proportions as across campus, 30 students and instructors were gunned down in a classroom building. As the details emerged of the worst shooting incident in U.S. history, educators and…

Cell phones have become prevalent on college campuses. Most students use them as their primary phone to avoid changing phone service every year or dealing with university-based long-distance charges. In the wake of recent college shootings and threats of violence on campus, administrators have begun to deploy cell phone solutions to send emergency…

In this article, the author focuses on technology use related to campus crisis and shows the impact that newer technologies have on making the world seem much smaller and united. When crises occur, such as at Virginia Tech shootings or Hurricane Katrina, students across the United States and even the world reach out to one another through new…

George Mason University has four campuses in Northern Virginia and 30,000 students, of whom 40 percent are graduate students. One of its campuses is just one mile from the Pentagon. On September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, no one knew the extent of the damage, how many people had been killed or…

It is essential that the traditional emergency management structure be used as a framework for higher education emergency planning. The four phases of emergency management should be reflected in the architecture of all planning efforts. These include "preparedness," "response," "mitigation," and "recovery."…

A crisis can occur at any time, whether or not a school's staff plans for it. This resource guide is a compilation of user-friendly examples of policies, procedures, guidelines, checklists, and forms to help Virginia schools develop and implement a systematic crisis-management plan. Chapter 1 provides an introductory overview of the essential…