Campus Crisis Response

College campuses in the late Sixties and early Seventies were alive with pickets, marches, protests and a few riots. I received my Master's Degree in Higher Education, College Student Personnel Counseling from Southern Illinois University in 1967 with a paper on "Three Days of Riots on the Campus of SIU". It was quite an introduction to my career in Student Counseling.

Karen and I with a new baby girl Julia came to Cincinnati in July of 67 and found our new home in Sawyer Hall where I was to be the Resident Counselor for 600 upper class male students. The young men in our hall were mostly wonderful people but, like many budding adolescents and 20 somethings, they liked to party and carouse. I had to get a few out of jail and intervene in several conflicts between warring bundles of testosterone but I enjoyed my job a lot.

Then, in the Spring of 68, things got a lot more exciting and dangerous. We saw a dramatic increase in the number of students who were doing drugs and others who were high on protesting. I attended a University conference in Detroit in the middle of their riots. The conference met in a downtown hotel but we had to stay in a hotel across the river in Canada. The daily drive into Detroit was a harrowing experience.

At the same time our campus faced a series of intense marches and almost daily protests. I met often with the President and other high officials to discuss what we could do to protect ourselves but we were clueless. We did know and it was impossible to predict what the radicals would do.

We heard from the FBI that our residence hall was the focus of a planned dynamite and firebomb attack from radical students. We were scared silly. Here is how insane it was in those days. The FBI told us that the Black Panthers planned to put dynamite on each of the large posts holding up our building and throw gasoline into the ground floor offices. The pillars would collapse forcing the students to run out of the exits where they would be hit with Molotov Cocktails of burning gasoline.

We had to come up with a plan to evacuate all 600 men from the hall if we were attacked. However, if the Panthers were planning to throw burning gasoline on us as we left the building, an evacuation would not be safe. What could we do?

We developed a plan to train every person to grab a blanket and wrap it around them as they exited the stairwell. This would protect them from the gasoline attacks and they were told to run straight through the Panthers to safety into safety in French Hall. Desperate people have desperate plans.

Would that plan have worked if we were actually attacked? I do not know. But I do know this. The Monday Morning Quarterbacks would have had us drawn and quartered no matter what happened. These MMQ are not able to coach or play the games themselves but they are expert critics after the fact. MMQ's are severely criticising the leaders and cops at Virginia Tech. One of the most stupid charges being leveled is that they should have "Closed the campus down".
I am stunned by the lack of basic intelligence of those making this accusation.

#1. It cannot be done. The campus is too big and too complex.
#2. That could induce panic. The ACLU will not allow cops to stop a person who actually looks suspicious let alone lock down 30,000 people for no reason.
#3. It would not help the situation. There was no information on who the killer was nor what he looked like or how to recognize he was dangerous.
#4. The initial killings looked like a domestic quarrel gone wrong. There was not any reason to suspect a mass murder was loose. In the history of the United States of America, as far as I know, this case is unique and could not have been anticipated. Cops are rightly trained to look for an MO or a pattern. I am sure the cops came onto this scene and saw a "Domestic MO". The fact that they released any kind of alert took enormous courage in light of the lack of evidence. Had it been a false alarm the officials would have been excoriated by the press.
#5. Crises planning is always done in the dark and when the crisis arrives the plan will change.

For example, the next three or four years U.C. had many threats like the one mentioned above. We tried to develop plans and contingency plans but if the radicals did not cooperate our plans had to change in the heat of the moment. Finally, the Kent State killings occurred and everything not nailed down broke loose. We closed the University down and decided to reopen it in one week. (That itself is a long story.)

You MMQ's with 20/20 Vision need to give it a rest. I can tell from your statements and questions that you have never even had to stop your kids from acting out let alone stop a riot or a mass murderer. I have been faced with those decisions and it was awful.

I will close with one more anecdote about campus life. Every evening I walked from the basement to the top floor and back again to check things out. I often smelled Marijuana or intercepted women on the floor and had to deal with those minor issues that always surround men.

One night I was confronted with a situation that gave me chills then and today. Sawyer Hall was the Fire Alarm Nerve Center for three Halls, each with 400 to 600 residents. On the night in question I came down the stairs to see the fire door to the furnace room unlocked. That was illegal and I could not imagine how it happened since only a few maintenance people had a key.

I slowly opened the door, fearful that I might confront an intruder, to stare into a series of blank lights where there should have beena series of red lights. The lights were always to be on according to the fire codes. That indicated that the fire alarms in all three halls were set and ready to send a signal to the local fire house in case the sensors picked up smoke or heat. But they were all off. That meant we had no fire alarm system in any of the three residence halls.

It hit me hard! Someone had purposefully turned them off. Someone wanted us to be without a fire alarm. That was in the midst of the FBI's weekly reports that the Black Panthers wanted to burn our building down and kill all the students. My one year old daughter, my wife and I would be included in the carnage.

I did several things to get the attention of the fire and police officials and to force the University to provide us with better security. This event did get their attention and I got much more assertive about my family. However, if some fanatic or some psychotic or paranoid person wants to blow us up he can always find a way.

Some of the UC students from those days read my blog. If you have anything you want to post please feel free to do so.

To you MMQ's; go try it yourself some day. Go to Iraq or Israel and see how well you do in preventing suicide bombers. Until you do, stop criticizing people after the fact.

My sympathy and prayers go to the VT families, community and the officials who must live with the pain of losing so many students and colleagues.