Reputational Crises Profiled - Part 5

Copyright (c) 2010 Peg Jackson

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Tech

- The nature of the crisis.

On April 16, 2007 a deranged student shot and killed 32 students and faculty members on the Virginia Tech campus. The student, Seung Hui Cho, shot and killed two students in a dorm and then went on to a classroom building where he gunned down 30 students and faculty in one of the most horrific incidents in history. .

- The quality of the response.

The campus police and local law enforcement were hampered by communications issues and/or devices to signal an emergency on campus. The processes for alerting the campus and the media to an emergency were very protracted. The Virginia Tech campus police had the authority to send an emergency message; they did not have the technical means to do so. Only two people, the associate vice president for University Relations and the director of News and Information, had the codes to send a message. The police could not access the alerting system to send a message. The police had to contact the university leadership on the need and proposed content of a message Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007.

- What were the results?

Following the massacre, the State of Virginia convened a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the incident. The panel determined that current federal and state privacy policies were hampering the ability to identify and treat troubled students. There were serious gaps uncovered in the university emergency preparedness and response Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007.

- What were some of the underlying issues that triggered the crisis?

Issues that contributed to the crisis included the community and the university lack of assertive policies for dealing with troubled students. The gunman had been under court order to undergo psychiatric treatment, but no one checked to ensure that the student complied with the order Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007.

The institution's organizational culture focused heavily on ensuring the privacy of students without taking into consideration the welfare of the overall student population. Several members of the faculty raised concerns about Cho's mental state, but their concerns were ignored by the administration.

The Panel found that the Virginia Tech Emergency Response Plan was deficient in these areas:

- The Plan was out of date - contained information that was not current.

- Did not include provisions or training to deal with a shooting scenario.

- Protocols for sending an emergency message in use on April 16 were cumbersome, untimely and problematic when a decision was needed as soon as possible.

- Police did not have the capability to send out an emergency message - had to await the deliberations of the Policy Group of which the police were not members. Policy group had to be convened to decide whether to send a message to the university and to structure its content.

- No security cameras were in place in the dorms or anywhere else on campus Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, 2007.

- What can your organization learn from this reputational crisis?

The massacre at Virginia Tech is a particularly horrendous example of workplace violence. No one at the university appeared to anticipate that an event like this could ever take place. No one in the student population, particularly Cho's roommates, appeared to be even aware of the stockpile of weapons he was storing in his room. Thirty-two people paid the ultimate price because a university administration chose to hide behind policies and regulations rather than take action to deal with a mentally ill student.

The institution did not have a means of alerting the entire campus to shelter in place, or to alert them via text messages or email or by putting a message on their computer screens. Based on the Review Panel's report the institution certainly did not ever engage in shelter-in-place exercises or even in exercises which would alert the entire campus to an emergency situation.

There are two important lessons to take away from this tragic example. The first is that workplace violence can and will happen. It does not need to make sense particularly if the perpetrator is mentally ill. Despite what appears to be an abundance of laws at the federal and state levels, mentally ill people still seem to be able to obtain weapons. The second lesson is that there is no substitute for a well-crafted crisis management plan that is practiced routinely and is understood by everyone in your organization.