April 08--BLACKSBURG -- It is ironic that as rates of violence overall continue to decline in the United States, public attention is keenly focused on sudden, catastrophic violence like the April 16, 2007, shootings at Virginia Tech.
Though still statistically rare, the devastating impact of such killings has prompted a new pressure on campuses to prevent such violence. And from its experience, Tech has become a teacher to universities across the country, and in other countries, on how to better manage those risks.
Virginia Tech Deputy Police Chief Gene Deisinger, hired in 2009 to direct Tech's threat assessment program, has become the face of the effort, which today is weaved throughout campus operations, beginning with student applications for admissions and including employee review -- and sometimes reaching out of state.
At a recent training of police and higher education officials held at Radford University, Deisinger illustrated the risks and the best practices of violence prevention with a brief sketch of an actual case study, edited for privacy concerns.
After troubled student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in April 2007 before shooting himself, an out-of-state college professor began to follow the story.
Like Cho, the man had thought about killing himself. One day in the spring of 2008, he loaded an assault rifle into his car and drove toward Tech with the idea of killing himself in front the April 16 memorial.
According to the case file, police tracked him to within a half-mile of the university.
Deisinger told the group that he still doesn't know if the man actually made it onto campus. Perhaps he did, but turned around and left before being stopped by police. Perhaps he didn't, and police stopped him before he could find his way.
The man was eventually detained in a psychiatric facility for a time, and today lives and works out of state.
"His attachment to us was symbolic," Deisinger said. "I don't believe he poses an ongoing threat. But we still monitor him."
Deisinger and the university's threat assessment team continue to track the man's circumstances periodically, and watch out for any changes in his life that could lead to problems.
In fact, since it was constituted in December 2007 after the shootings, Tech's threat assessment team has evaluated, investigated or monitored up to 350 cases a year of people who might pose a threat to the university or some member of its community.
Connecting the dots
Mandated in 2008 by the General Assembly, threat assessment teams have been formed at public universities across Virginia.
Since then, the process of threat assessment has been weaved into the fabric of Tech's operations, from the evaluation of up to 23,000 student applications a year to employee relations among the university's 7,800 employees and even in the classroom.
Anyone who perceives a threat to the university is encouraged to report it to the team.
Deisinger, a licensed psychologist and sworn police officer, came to Tech from Iowa State University, where in 1994 he implemented one of the country's first threat assessment programs. A nationally recognized expert in the field, Deisinger trains higher education officials and police in the U.S. and abroad in best practices for preventing campus violence.
Since coming to Tech, he has brought a focus and rigor to the threat assessment and management program, Associate Vice President for Human Resources Hal Irvin said.
For a time, Irvin, who came to Blacksburg in 2008 from Georgia Tech, served on the team. He said he continues to be impressed with the process it follows. Case management duties are clearly delineated among the members, Irvin said. And Deisinger emphasizes follow-up.
The legislative mandate for threat assessment at universities stemmed from the findings of a special state investigative panel convened by then Gov. Tim Kaine to look into the causes of the April 16 shootings.
In one of its key findings, the panel wrote that despite Cho's increasingly bizarre behavior reported by many people beginning in 2005, "dots were not connected and signals were missed" of the escalating threat he posed.
Even after complaints by his professors and fellow students, contact with the counseling center, run-ins with police and an involuntary mental health commitment, no one assembled the puzzle of behaviors, that, if recognized in time, might have led to effective intervention.
Just more than a year later, Cho committed the worst school shooting in U.S. history, and the tragedy has become a touchstone for campus violence. Because of the work done to better address threats, Tech has become a resource for other institutions.
Today, Tech's threat assessment team is staffed by officials from key areas of the university -- student affairs, human resources, the Cook Counseling Center, the police department -- and meets weekly to discuss open cases and new reports. Additionally, its members can be convened at any time to deal with evolving threats, Deisinger said.
About 60 percent of cases opened in a given year will be closed within a few months. Most of them are resolved by providing assistance to someone who is struggling with academic, financial, emotional or other problems, Deisinger said.
But some cases remain open indefinitely.
These "persons of concern" can be students, faculty, staff, administrators, vendors, contractors or someone connected to them. Or, like the man with the assault rifle, it can be someone with no known tie to the campus.
The unknown threat. That's the one that Deisinger said "scares the heck out of me."
And there is reason for concern. In December, a troubled Radford University student, Ross Ashley, traveled to Tech and fatally shot Officer Deriek Crouse as the officer sat in his patrol car.
Police have found no motive for the shooting. Ashley had never enrolled, or even applied to Tech. And no connection between the shooter and the victim has been uncovered.
But fear of such attacks will not prevent them, Deisinger emphasized. And, in fact, campuses -- even Tech's -- are relatively safe places.
Between 1909 and 2009, there have been a little more than 270 campus-based violent attacks in this country, according to a 2010 joint study by the Secret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Education.
But in that time, the student population has grown from less than 1 million to about 18 million, according to the study.
Per capita, the incidents of campus violence have not increased, Deisinger said. They have simply kept pace with growth in college admissions.
"Your drive home is more dangerous than anything you will come in contact with here," he said.
While nothing is likely to prevent all attacks, with a systematic, objective approach, many of the risks of campus violence, whether a sexual assault or a shooting, can be mitigated.
Today, studies of campus attacks, along with decades of research into other areas of targeted violence -- in the workplace, against public officials -- have helped to shape a more objective method of identifying and minimizing that risk, Deisinger said.
At Tech, attempts to do so begin with the annual screening of up to 23,000 applications for admissions.
'A big, red stop sign'
In a given year, admissions staff may flag up to 200 applications that need a second look, said Mildred Johnson, director of admissions. Of those, fewer than 20 require in-depth security review.
"We're doing our due diligence. Nothing is perfect. We're never going to be 100 percent," Johnson said. "But we're going to be as doggone close as possible."
That's not to say that anyone who has made a mistake in life is forever barred from Tech.
"We do want to give a second chance," Johnson said. "We've had students who have been in jail, but turned their life around."
But community safety is paramount. Since 2007, Tech has continually refined its application for admissions, asking detailed questions about disciplinary issues, behavioral problems and criminal activity.
All applications are compared to sex offender registries, Johnson said. Then the staff of about a dozen reviews the applicant's answer to each question, and carefully reads the personal statements of potential students, looking for red flags.
Any involvement with firearms, stealing, assault, drug use or possession, and major alcohol violations stop all progress on an application. Literally, the computer system locks the application and displays "a big, red stop sign," Johnson said.
At that point, only she has access to it. Johnson often then consults with Tony Haga, a Tech police investigator assigned to the threat assessment team. Any serious concerns go to the team, and Johnson said she then follows their recommendations.
Students are now bound by university rules to self-report any criminal convictions at any time during their college career. Failure to do so violates student conduct policies, and can lead to consequences.
Before 2007, review of applications was mostly a manual process. Today, it is highly computerized, and Johnson gives presentations to other university admissions officials about Tech's system.
"We're trying to take the possibility of human error out," she said.
While most cases referred for threat assessment involve the university's 30,000 students, some are related to the 7,800 university employees working in Blacksburg and at satellite offices across the state, Irvin said.
Threat assessment is rarely an issue in the hiring process, Irvin said. If a concern about a potential hire rose to the level of threat assessment, "we just wouldn't hire that person."
But if a current employee exhibits aggression, or other concerning behavior, that would be referred to the team, Irvin said.
It's not a "Big Brother"kind of assessment, Irvin said.
"Threat assessment is a loaded term," he said. The goal "is safeguarding the institution, but also safeguarding the individual with problems, who needs help."
Officials focus as much as possible on assessing the needs of a person of concern, and providing resources, such as counseling or mediation.
But sometimes an employee has violated a policy, and a co-worker feels threatened or intimidated. Then disciplinary measures must be taken, Irvin said.
Security in the hiring process continues to be refined at Tech. Before a vote in March by the board of visitors requiring criminal background checks for all hires, such checks had been limited to high-risk positions, such as those working directly with students, Irvin said.
Now all new hires across the university, including faculty, must submit to a criminal background check.
An objective methodology
Assessing risk is complex, and the stakes are high.
"We can't predict the next mass shooter," Deisinger said. Cho, for example, "never had a history of violence against any human being."
But his behaviors, if taken together, show a young man on the path to violence.
Research shows that perpetrators of violent attacks rarely make direct threats against their victims before committing the crime. But, more than 75 percent of them did plan their attack and discuss it with others. That allows in many cases a chance to identify risk and intervene before an attack happens.
The methods of threat assessment flow from work begun in the 1980s by the Secret Service and refined by research into workplace safety and violence prevention, Deisinger said. School violence became a national issue in 1998 with the Columbine High School attack in Colorado. Then came the 2007 shootings at Tech.
To date, Deisinger said, there has been no authoritative survey of the number of threat assessment programs being implemented in higher education, or if all of those programs use proven, objective methods.
While more and more colleges and universities are implementing violence prevention, some are using antiquated or unscientific methods that won't minimize their risk.
"The scary ones use profiling," Deisinger said.
Besides being legally and ethically questionable, profiling is ineffective, and has been discarded by most national law enforcement agencies, he said.
Responsible, effective threat assessment is a research-based method of evaluating behavior and the particular life circumstances of an individual who has caused concern among officials or peers.
"When these events are developing, before the shooting starts, there very often is a student who knows about it," said Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist, mental health expert, and one of the founding fathers of trauma studies.
"That student can be inhibited from talking to an adult, any adult," Ochberg said. "We need, as adults, to know how to listen to this student and protect them from reprisals.
"It's only now that we're getting better at identifying threats and informing of threats and knowing what to do."
At Tech, that means encouraging reports from anyone with safety concerns or knowledge of potential threats to the campus or community.
"This isn't rocket science, folks," Deisinger told a group of trainees recently at Radford University. "If you see behaviors that cause concern, pay attention and follow up."
For more information on threat assessment or reporting a concern, visit www.threatassessment.vt.edu.
Copyright 2012 - The Roanoke Times, Va.
