April 16, 2008
Albuquerque Journal
UNM Takes Lead In Safety
By Martin Salazar; Journal Staff WriterA year after 32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech, New Mexico is looking at becoming the first state in the nation to accredit colleges based on how safe they are.
The accreditation would be voluntary and is aimed at ensuring that campuses are prepared for a shooting or other emergency.
Most New Mexico colleges already have made changes to assure parents and students that their schools are safe.
"I don't think there's any question they're safer," Higher Education Secretary Reed Dasenbrock said. "New Mexico has moved more quickly, I think, and more comprehensively on issues of campus safety than certainly any other state that I know."
Among those steps:
- The University of New Mexico has set up a hot line staffed by a licensed psychologist for faculty members to call when they're concerned about a student's behavior. A Faculty Intervention Team— made up of the psychologist, the dean of students and a representative from university counsel— can be quickly convened if a threat is perceived.
- UNM, the state's largest university, also started a mass communication system that can alert people to danger via their cell phones.
- UNM, Eastern New Mexico University and San Juan College, among others, have been conducting drills to test their emergency response systems.
- A state Higher Education Department committee is assessing emergency plans from all of the state's colleges.
- The department proposes to use safety as part of a new system for ranking the priority of requested building projects.
The accreditation idea is merely in the talking stage, but if it were eventually adopted, it would be a first in the nation, Dasenbrock said.
The benefit, Dasenbrock said, would be to encourage campus officials to regularly evaluate safety and security systems. Outside experts would then conduct their own evaluation. Dasenbrock said the idea came from Stephen Lopez, deputy police chief at NMSU.
"Clearly, we do this only if there's a strong commitment of all the institutions because it's going to be not (a) trivial commitment on time and resources," Dasenbrock said.
UNM Police Chief Kathy Guimond said that after the Virginia Tech shootings, her office was flooded with calls from faculty members who were concerned about their students. She said those calls prompted the university to create the Faculty Intervention Team, or FIT.
"The goal really is to provide a centralized, easily accessible place for faculty to get consultation about a student they're concerned about to see what route they need to go with that," said Harry Linneman, director of counseling and therapy services at UNM's Student Health Center. Linneman, who takes calls from concerned faculty members, is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Dasenbrock said one issue officials throughout the country are dealing with is limits set by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects student privacy rights.
Before Virginia Tech, higher education institutions tended to use a strict interpretation of FERPA and not report emerging problems because they felt that doing so would violate the law, he said.
Dasenbrock said the U.S. Department of Education has published proposed new rules that would make it clear that schools have more leeway than previously thought.
While much of the campus safety discussion since Virginia Tech has focused on shootings, Dasenbrock said his department has taken an "all-hazards" approach to evaluating campus safety. The broader approach includes potential natural disasters and other emergencies along with possible campus shootings.