WU makes team effort to prevent campus tragedy

By Jonathan McFadden

mcfaddenj@mytjnow.com

Graphic by McKenna Brandon • Special to The Johnsonian

Winthrop is equipped to deal with a Jared Loughner on campus. 

Students with disruptive behavior found violating Winthrop’s code of conduct or struggling with major psychological disorders win the attention of Winthrop’s behavioral intervention team.

In light of Loughner’s recent shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., Winthrop’s assessment team is already in place and ready to take action if the need arises.

The threat-response group consists of Campus Police, Health and Counseling Services and the Office of the Dean of Students and provides only the second line of defense in preventing campus-wide disaster at the hands of a student.

The first line: the Weekly Critical Incident Review Team , a group made up of Campus police, Residence Life, the Office of the Dean of Students and Health and Counseling Services, that meets each Wednesday morning.

Their method: scour police reports involving students and provide a systemic approach to students whose behavior may be disruptive and harmful to themselves or to the Winthrop community, said Bethany Marlowe, dean of students.

Some issues require cut-and-dry solutions, such as underage drinking.

Others are medical in nature, such as a student injury needing a follow-up. In instances such as these, Residence Life checks up on injured students if they live in the residence halls. Injured off-campus students usually receive a call from either Sean Blackburn, assistant dean of students, or from Marlowe herself.

When a concerned student or faculty member has safety concerns about another student, Marlowe encourages them to contact campus police.

“You can get an escort to your car, you can have campus police respond to the student to find out if there is a threat that’s involved,” Marlowe said.

The other option is to contact the dean of students office, where either Marlowe or Blackburn will seek the best possible method to address any student’s problems.

New faculty members receive training on how to handle situations in which students may display disruptive behavior in the classroom.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time so it’s not like we came up with this after Tucson or after Virginia Tech,” Marlowe said.

Each year, Marlowe holds a staff retreat and goes over sexual assault protocol and threat assessment protocol.

Student affairs staff and student leaders who work closely with Marlowe and Blackburn are among those who learn about the protocol.

The team also works with residence life closely, training RAs RLCs, orientation leaders and peer mentors in the protocol, as well as encouraging them to act as safety nets for their residents or students.

Staff that work in the residence halls are able to work with students, who may be dealing with stress, on lower levels and aid in preventing that stress from exacerbating.

Not only is residence life an invaluable resource, but Winthrop’s faculty provides further support.

“Our faculty is very caring,” Marlowe said.

Marlowe said that she gets a lot of calls from faculty concerned that particular students may not succeed or fulfill their academic potential due to the stress they deal with.

Whether from residence life, health and counseling services or faculty and staff, the overall goal is prevention, Marlowe said.  

“We’re not looking to send somebody to jail or do some kind of drastic action,” Marlowe said.

A majority of the time, students who display disruptive behaviors are stressed out and have reached their boiling point, Marlowe added.

In those cases, Marlowe herself makes contact with the student and talks with them in an attempt to provide help.

Assessment team

Still, there exist issues that can’t wait to be addressed on Wednesdays.

When those situations rear their heads, the assessment team steps in—quickly.

Comprised of campus police, health and counseling services and the dean of students, the behavioral assessment team hasn’t seen any emergencies of a Jared Loughner caliber, but did act when someone threw a smoke bomb into Owens a few years ago.

“The smoke bomb really scared people,” Marlowe said. “…We didn’t wait for a Wednesday meeting to talk about what we’re going to do with this guy because they caught him pretty quick.”

Along with Chief Zebedis and Dr. Kwabena Sankofa, staff psychologist at health and counseling services, Marlowe met with the student to try and help him

Campus recovery

After a traumatic event, how does the campus cope?

The answer lies in a multiple-thronged effort from the assessment team.

As priority e-mails explaining trauma and encouraging open dialogue are circulated to the student body, all three acting bodies of the assessment team analyze the situation from different aspects.

Campus Police analyzes any possible crimes from the student’s offense. Health and Counseling Services examines the student’s mental health. The office of the dean of students looks at the student himself and possible resources and support available.

In addition, each part of the assessment team has a different set of responsibilities. 

Campus Police 

Chief of Campus Police Frank Zebedis represents campus police on the assessment team and said his role is to gather as much information via investigation.

“After we have all the facts and information, the situation is assessed,” Zebedis said.

Zebedis also gives his professional input when necessary.

“Each situation is different and requires different levels of input or involvement,” he said.

In the end, Zebedis collectively makes decisions along with Dr. Kwabena Sankofa, who represents health and counseling services, and Dean Marlowe.

To help prepare other students, Zebedis and campus police offer active shooter training—a procedures-based process that instructs students, faculty and staff on what steps to take if someone with a gun walks into an office or classroom.

Health and Counseling Services

When examining students for assessment, Dr. Kwabena Sankofa looks at their psychological and emotional history and health.

“Sometimes I’ll go back to middle school or elementary school to get a sense of who this person is and patterns to his behavior,” said Sankofa, staff psychologist with and representative of health and counseling services for the assessment team. 

Sankofa performs an assessment on the student, but doesn’t perform a clinical diagnosis because a diagnosis must remain confidential.

Health and Counseling Services cannot mandate counseling, but they can legally and ethically mandate up to four assessment sessions for the student, Sankofa said.

Once a student establishes a professional relationship with health and counseling services, that student becomes an official client of one of the counselors and confidentiality kicks in.

With that, a counselor can not go back to the weekly incident meetings and talk specifics about the individual’s diagnosis or psychological state, Sankofa said.

Code of ethics from the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Counseling Association (ACA) maintain that psychologists have a primary obligation to protect confidential information obtained through and stored in any particular medium.

“That is foremost as counselors,” Sankofa said. “It’s like protecting the health and welfare of that person.”

Yet, counselors are allowed to talk about the quality of involvement from the patient during sessions and provide general opinion, Sankofa said. 

Still, there exists a time when confidentiality can be breached.

The assessment team has the duty to warn members of the campus community when potentially dangerous or harmful situations have been reported if review by campus officials warrants notification.

If an individual poses a serious threat or danger to himself or others, the assessment team may breach confidentiality to warn identified victims. 

When confronted with severe psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, the assessment team works together to help students and their parents gain access to other resources that may be able to help. 

For Sankofa, the care the team provides is just as important as the prevention.

Even if students no longer attend Winthrop, the team still follows-through with them and their parents and offer them more help.

“That’s the key, we care--it’s about the care of the student,” Sankofa said. “It’s not about getting rid of a student but supporting that student throughout.”

Dean of Students 

Even if an offense is not a crime, it can still constitute a violation of Winthrop’s student conduct code, Marlowe said.

Disruption of classes, seminars and research projects is the first prohibited behavior in the student conduct code and remains priority for the dean of students office, according to guidelines given to all faculty.

Faculty are encouraged to consult the dean of students whenever in doubt about a student’s behavior and call campus police for any behavior that seems threatening.

The Dean of Students office also acts as a judicial force capable of giving students sanctions or assigning them community service as a punishment.  

Faculty and student involvement

Until there’s some kind of red flag raised, there’s no way for the assessment team to gauge whether a student may pose a serious risk to himself or the community at large, there’s no way of assessing anyone.

It’s the efforts of the faculty that could help identify any underlying issues.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to call one of the three participating departments in the assessment team if a student’s behavior is erratic or disruptive to others.

Marlowe and her staff train faculty and staff in the Teaching Learning Center, teaching them to be more aware and cognizant of student’s behavior.

“After an event like Tucson, people are more in-tune to it,” Marlowe said. “I get more phone calls [from faculty].”

Students can also be a big help in identifying potential flares for violence.

Still, the bottom line and the predominant goal remains the same: prevent violence from breaking out.

“If someone is at risk of hurting this community, and if it comes to our attention, they will be accessed and there will be a plan that will protect the community,” Marlowe said.