VCU Safety Committee focuses on sexual assault, domestic violence

Mechelle Hankerson

News Editor

Five years after the Virginia Tech shooting, Virginia’s public universities are evaluating policies that came about in light of the death of 32 people and injury of 17 on the school’s campus.

While most of the state’s immediate changes focused on gun policies, then-Gov. Tim Kaine also focused on safety policies on college campuses.

One law required all of Virginia’s four-year colleges and universities to form panels with the power to investigate students’ academic, medical and criminal records in order to better identify potential threats to university communities.

The state law says that records cannot arbitrarily be accessed: Threat assessment teams must identify a specific student as dangerous or the student must exhibit disruptive behavior or need for assistance.

The team is not allowed to disclose information they find through accessing personal health and academic records.

VCU’s University Safety Committee was formed shortly after the Virginia Tech shooting as per the General Assembly’s 2008 legislation that required a campus safety-assessment team.

VCU’s Safety Committee is not the body with the rights to student records, but the Threat Assessment Team, which operates under the larger committee, does have access to records when they feel as though a threat is present.

“The safety committee is primarily about sharing information and providing education related to issues around safety (like) domestic violence and sexual assault,” said Jihad Aziz, committee chair and psychologist in University Counseling Services. “So it looks at policies that the university has in place and (if they are) appropriate and accurate and how (we can) get information about what’s out there to students to help them to remain safe.”

VCU’s Threat Assessment Team, which works under the Safety Committee, has handled 86 cases since the fall 2010 semester, according to University case manager Kendall Plageman.

While Plageman was not able to cite specific types of cases the team has handled, she did say an increasing awareness of the team may be one reason why the team has seen an overall increase in reported incidences.

According to Aziz, not all issues handled by the Safety Committee at VCU are similar to situations like Tech. Aziz said that at VCU, in addition to what the state requires, the Safety Committee focuses on issues like domestic violence and sexual assault.

“We look at what sorts of issues affect VCU,” he said. “(We get) a feel for where (students) had concerns and then try to find ways to meet those concerns.”

Each spring, the Safety Committee  organizes a safety forum to make sure the information they send out is pertinent to students’ needs and concerns.

“The messages are fairly consistent in helping students focus on their personal safety,” Aziz said.