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RESOURCES
FOR HIGHER
EDUCATION
Newsletters:
In This Issue Current Issue Archives
May 15, 2007
| Student Affairs Leader - May 15, 2007 - Full issue PDF … |
| When There Is No Protocol By Jan Winniford Many campuses are now in the process of reviewing their crisis management plans and resources. In my experience, there are two key components to every plan that are easy to overlook: flexibility and training. These elements are critical when a campus finds itself in a crisis. I experienced such a situation in 1999 as the associate vice president for student affairs at Texas A&M University, when a 55-foot stack of logs collapsed, killing 12 people and injuring 28. It became known as the “Bonfire Tragedy.” |
| On-Campus Report Capsules If you are a member of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs, you already receive a weekly resource we admire, the ASJA Law and Policy Report, which is edited by the University of Maryland’s Gary Pavela. The issue following the shooting at Virginia Tech provided an annotated list of resources that we’d like to pass along, including the following. |
| Helping Students Move from Tragedy to Recovery By Therese Kattner When a painful national event happens, there’s not only the primary crisis but many secondary crises as well. The shootings at Virginia Tech, for example, might lead to overwhelming distress for vulnerable students at other campuses. |
| Counseling Virginia Tech Students: One Pastor’s Observations By Bill Litman One of the pastors who stepped in to assist with counseling students at Virginia Tech during the first days after the shooting was Bill Litman, Pastor of Independent Churches of Christ, who also has a student affairs background. We asked him share his observations with us. –C.S. My first observation when I arrived in Blacksburg on Tuesday, April 17, was similar to what I’ve observed outside hospital rooms, and after fires, tornadoes, and other places where crisis has struck: people moving about, at times shuffling, but with no real sense of direction. The difference at Blacksburg was that the number of people moving was in the thousands. |
| Understanding “Generation Me” A Conversation with Jean Twenge By Catherine Stover In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we wanted to know more about how college students were coping, so we asked Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before, to share her research on this generation with us. |
| Eight Action Steps for Student Affairs to Consider By Arthur Sandeen and Margaret J. Barr In the weeks and months to come, student affairs professionals across the country will face challenges both big and small related to the tragic events at Virginia Tech. Although nothing can fully prepare any of us to deal with a tragedy of this magnitude, it is important to do whatever we can to assure that our campus is as prepared as it possibly can be. With that in mind, we urge student affairs professionals to consider the following action steps: |
