Dive Brief:
- Campus security officers have been on edge with threatened and real violence since the shooting at Umpqua Community College left 10 people dead earlier this month.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that schools in Kentucky, Oregon, and Philadelphia have sent out safety alerts or shut down because of threats of violence, and Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern have dealt with their own campus shootings.
- In recent years, campuses have become more vigilant about monitoring social media for threats or comments that could lead to violence while coordinating services across campus to keep tabs on certain students.
Dive Insight:
Eastern Kentucky University closed its campus for multiple days and moved its home football game following a threat written in a university bathroom and continued online. While several days of closure may seem like a lot during a tightly packed semester, administrators across the country have been less inclined to take such threats lightly, and panic that spreads through the student, parent, and staff community is hard to ignore.
In Philadelphia, Temple University kept its campus open, but some professors canceled their classes anyway in response to a vague threat that affected schools across the city. At least now, few would blame college and university leaders for being too cautious.