University of Wisconsin Police Chief Susan Riseling detailed the system-wide security review team, commissioned to prevent a Virginia Tech-like incident from occurring at UW, at a roundtable presentation at Memorial Union Wednesday.
Riseling, who chairs the 2007 President’s Commission on University Security, a system-wide review team comprised of members of the Board of Regents and representatives from every UW System campus, referred to the April 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy as the “textbook case” for university police departments.
“If you want to take a textbook of how to do it right, take Virginia Tech,” Riseling said. “They took it as it came, which is all most of us can really do.”
Riseling said, however, that UW-Madison would not have fared as well if faced with the same situation because of its large size and student population.
“Hindsight is always great,” Riseling said, “But what we’re confronted with today is this exceedingly high set of expectations.”
Riseling said the university needs to learn from past tragedies and engage in a four-step process—prevention, pre-violence intervention, intervention during violence and post-incident management.
“Violence is the end result of an understandable and often discernible process,” she said. “Nobody snaps—they always send off some type of warning signs.”
According to Riseling, some of these signs include threatening or intimidating behavior, allusions to violence, incidences of anger and/or depression, substance abuse problems and paranoia.
“We ought to tell people to report up the unusual––it’s okay to report up the unusual,” Riseling said. “We’re talking about having dialogue and conversations about what’s not right with this picture.”
She presented a list of 17 recommendations compiled by the review team. Some of those include: the development of a comprehensive “awareness” campaign to be conducted on each UW campus; thorough examinations of counseling and mental health resources for each campus; and direct student involvement in decision-making and implementation of post violence “healing” measures that Riseling said should continue for six months or longer.
Riseling stressed the need for a UW-Madison faculty code of conduct, which does not currently exist on campus. She said when it comes to cases of misconduct, all faculty members should be held accountable for their actions.
A UW review team is currently reviewing 21 active cases involving people of concern, Riseling said. She stressed that although two situations may appear similar, they are never the same.
So far this semester, UWPD has sent out six waves of e-mails to about 66,000 recipients to notify UW-Madison staff and students about emergency situations, including the Sept. 25 suicide scare at UW Hospital and the Sept. 28 robbery lockdown at 21 N. Park St.
“On both of those incidents the person who perpetrated them is in custody,” Riseling said. “Nobody got hurt, so I see those situations as wins.”
