SECURITY AT HARTWICK COLLEGE

Hartwick College is a small, private liberal arts college with nearly 1,500 students. Just as in the case of SUNY—Oneonta, Hartwick College had security and emergency plans in place before the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Hartwick has a professional staff and always looks at ways to attract, hire, and keep professional security personnel. The campus security at Hartwick is not a police force so by law its officers may not carry weapons.

As already noted, it is against the law in New York for anyone to bring a weapon on campus and a recent incident was cited where someone spotted a shotgun in a car parked on campus. The Oneonta police were called. The car did not belong to anyone associated with the school, but to a town resident who parked it on school grounds after meeting a co-ed and returning with her to the school dorm. The individual was found, arrested and spent the night in jail—the law had been broken. According to the head of security, “We will not tolerate any weapons on campus.” This is the attitude all parents should look for from campus security officials.

If a student is caught with a weapon, the Oneonta police department is called immediately and he or she is suspended. Usually the student voluntarily withdraws for the term.

At Hartwick, senior school officials meet once a week to discuss campus problems, specifically case reviews of individuals who are having academic, behavioral, or emotional problems. The school aggressively follows up on any individual who has been brought to its attention for having any of those problems.

The campus also has a hot line. Anyone can dial #3333 to report any individual on campus who is a cause for concern. It was indicated that if aberrant behavior is brought to the attention of security, they have the right to act immediately to ensure campus safety. The do not have to consult with any other school official before acting. Hartwick College has access to NY ALERT—the campus-wide cell phone, email, and text messaging system already in use at the nearby SUNY campus.

As an indication of just how serious Hartwick takes campus security, it was emphasized that “no weapon of any kind” does not simply refer to guns or knives, but includes slingshots or toy guns. None of these are allowed on campus. Here again is the no-nonsense attitude parents should look for. (To be continued)

GUN VIOLENCE: WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

The legal system does not want to tackle the problem of gun violence. Indeed there is no consistent standard of responsibility for those in management positions when one compares various crimes. If you are a manager anywhere, you can be held accountable for sexual harassment in your office even if you did not know it was taking place because you should have known about it. If you say something that someone perceives as sexist, you are held accountable—you might even lose your job. However, when it comes to shootings on campuses, even if you ignore the warning signs, if you know the potential for violence exists, you are not held accountable when an individual known to be unstable erupts into full blown violence—the legal system looks the other way. Bluntly, if you tell an off-color joke, you could lose your job. If you ignore the warning signs for a potentially violent individual and people are injured or killed, no sweat—you will not be held accountable.

There are a number of areas where laws should be enacted immediately as first steps to reducing gun violence. For example:

·         1. A law restricting the quantity of guns that can be sold at one time, such legislation would help prevent trafficking in arms.

·        2. law making background checks mandatory for all gun sales would close the gun show loophole and be a major step forward in keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons.

·      3. law licensing all gun owners and registering all weapons; such a law would promote responsible gun ownership.

·     4. law restricting (and prohibiting) the sale of certain types of weapons and ammunition, such as automatic assault weapons and high capacity clips; this law would help keep such weapons out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill.

·            5. law requiring safe storage of all weapons; this legislation would greatly reduce a child’s access to guns and the all too frequent killing of children.

·          6. law indicting those who engage in straw purchases (an individual who legally buys a gun, but is buying the weapon for someone who is prohibited from gun purchases); such a law would help in shutting down corrupt gun dealers and controlling the secondary gun market.

In the final analysis, until people are held accountable for their actions or inactions when it comes to campus shootings, there is no real incentive to spend the money or select leaders who will help ensure campus safety. The answer then ultimately rests with parents demanding high safety standards at all colleges and universities and financial donors making their contributions contingent on schools putting safety first. Together, if we push hard enough, we can make our children safer than they have been in years past. (To be continued)

             

VIRGINIA TECH'S STEGER BLAMES A DEAD PERSON

Parents need to look closely, and learn, from the attempts to manipulate the events of the morning of April 16, 2007.  For example, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger testified in the Pryde and Peterson trial that the email alerting the campus to the shootings was watered down and delayed until 0926 (just moments before Cho slaughtered 30 people in Norris Hall) at the request of Zenobia Hikes, former vice president of student affairs. Hikes died on October 27, 2008, and therefore, conveniently, cannot refute or deny Steger’s assertion.

Steger testified that Hikes argued that a notice about one student killed and another critically wounded, without family notification, would cause unnecessary panic and heartbreak. Steger said he found her argument “reasonable” and he thought it would be “horrible” to hear about it (the death) on the radio. So, Steger went on, he waited for more information to make a useful (he did not explain “useful”) notification. All I can say is that what he sent out only referred to a “shooting incident” and the email was certainly not useful. Furthermore, Hikes was very junior and to put the word “panic” in her mouth is, well to put it nicely, highly doubtful because preventing “panic” had been a major (but bogus) theme coming from high levels at Tech in relation to decisions made before and during the massacre.

Steger’s words were so egregious that six Virginia Tech faculty members wrote a letter to the editor of the Roanoke Times questioning the veracity of the school president’s testimony. The six pointed out that Hikes was too junior to make such a call. They also point out that, “Emergency and safety protocols dictate that policy decisions of this magnitude are made by others in positions superior to hers [Hikes], so it is distressing to us that she is the only member of the Tech Policy Group to have been singled out.”

Following the killings on April 16, 2007, there were rumors that the Steger administration instituted draconian measures to keep faculty members silent as part of the school’s aggressive campaign to manage the spin on the tragedy. It is therefore interesting to note that the six members who defended Hikes wrote the following in the first paragraph of their letter:  “In spite of the risks involved in speaking out, we felt a moral obligation to write on behalf of Dr. Hikes, who, due to her untimely death, is no longer able to speak out on her behalf.”

Notes taken by Kim O’Rourke, chief of staff to university President Charles Steger, for the Policy Group on the morning of the 16^th of April, do not single out Hikes as the main catalyst for delaying notifying the campus or revising the message. Those notes were shown to the jury during the trial.

Before I close, I need to remind you, the reader, of the magnitude of the task parents face in trying to tackle the problem of school safety. By the latest tally, Virginia Tech has spent over $1 million on public relations agencies to deflect attention away from what some have described as the worst massacre on a college campus in modern history. Can families compete with that kind of money? Furthermore, the school seems to be protected by politicians on both sides of the aisle in Richmond. The difficulty in simply getting one’s argument heard is almost overwhelming. (To be continued)

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS: CROCODILE TEARS; LITTLE ACTION

   

It is clear that more than a decade after the shootings at Columbine and the killings at the Appalachian School of Law and more than six years after the massacre at Virginia Tech, far too many school officials, law enforcement personnel, and politicians remain mystified and perplexed over how to meet the threat of school violence.

Yes, measures have been taken to improve campus safety, but not nearly enough. Most of the measures involve security and warning systems. Little has been done to improve campus mental health facilities, or to bring staff, faculty, and students together and explaining their rights and duties and making them part of the solution to the problem.

Lobbying and Ineffective Controls

All the crocodile tears and all the hand wringing have not produced the analysis, the will, or the determination necessary to adopt truly effective measures to minimize the threat of school gun violence in schools. Part of the reason for this failing is the unwillingness of state and federal politicians to address the vexing issue of keeping guns out of the hands of individuals who are a threat to themselves and others.

This failure to make more meaningful progress in school safety is not for lack of trying or lack of ideas, it is more for a lack of willingness to tackle difficult questions such as keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons, convicted domestic abusers, terrorists, and people who are dangerously mentally ill.

If there is no willingness, no courage on the part of people in positions of authority to act, then there can be no real progress toward reducing the number of school shootings. The highly charged and dreaded words “gun control” always interrupt a rational discourse and dialogue on the problem of school safety. Politicians are so afraid of the National Rifle Association (NRA) that many cower whenever the words “gun” or “guns” are raised.

Bumper stickers such as “guns don’t kill, people do” or “locked and loaded” appear on cars and trucks in church parking lots everywhere in Virginia. Good Christians apparently don’t see the oxymoron. When it comes to commandments such as “thou shalt not kill,” they seem to share Cho’s selective mutism and remain silent.

The NRA has so brainwashed the public that even to raise the subject of preventing school shootings brings responses such as, “Ok, but no one is going to take my gun away from me.” No one ever said anyone was going to take guns out of the hands of decent, law-abiding citizens—but that is the Pavlovian response of many. I can talk rationally and calmly about a wide variety of topics with most everyone in the small Virginia town where I live, but bring up school shootings and the NRA’s brainwashing kicks in.  

Some estimate that the NRA is the second most powerful lobby in Washington DC.  I would not be surprised that if on many domestic political issues the NRA is the most powerful lobby. One of its latest excursions into mind control and violation of the constitutional right of freedom of speech is to get states to adopt laws that make it illegal for doctors to ask patients if they have a gun at home. According to the May 13, 2011 edition of USA Today, three states are considering laws that would penalize doctors and other health care providers for asking patients or their parents whether they have a gun at home.

According to USA Today, “The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun interest groups argue that doctors violate patients’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms by inquiring about gun ownership. Doctors say they ask only because of safety concerns. Prohibiting them from asking about guns violates the First Amendment, at least one constitutional law expert says.”

What about the right of any doctor to ask any patient any question pertaining to the patient’s wellbeing? If you are going to apply order of importance to the amendments, then it is not unreasonable to think that the most important consideration on the founding fathers’ minds was freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment, but many, including the NRA, appear to believe there is only one amendment in the Bill of Rights that counts and is free of any qualifiers—the Second Amendment. And, following that logic the Second Amendment trumps all the other amendments.

What a shame if the power of the gun lobby, coupled with the cowardice of politicians, rewrites history and interprets the Constitution to the benefit of a paranoid minority. And what a tragedy if this minority then plays into the hands of killers who are looking for guns to carry out their own twisted fantasies of revenge. (To be continued)