UVa to warn of mental illness signs
Under a policy approved Saturday, the University of Virginia may notify a student’s parents if their child has mental illness and is deemed a danger to himself or others.
UVa’s Board of Visitors unanimously endorsed the policy that formally authorizes UVa to contact parents if there is a “substantial likelihood” in the near future that their child will harm himself or others, as evidenced by the student’s recent behavior or any other relevant information.
Further, the policy authorizes UVa to notify parents if their child is apparently suffering from “a lack of capacity to protect himself from harm or to provide for his basic human needs.”
However, the university will not contact parents if the mentally ill student’s physician or clinical psychologist states that such notification likely would cause the student to harm himself or another student.
All public colleges and universities in Virginia are required to approve such a parental notification policy, as per legislation unanimously passed by the General Assembly earlier this year and signed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine in March.
The measure’s chief sponsor, Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, said it was “great news” that UVa has moved to help prevent cases that could potentially echo the Virginia Tech shootings, in which student Seung Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members before taking his own life. The one-year anniversary of the Tech massacre is Wednesday.
“I’m very pleased UVa has taken such quick action,” Bell said. “It really shows how colleges like UVa have led the way on campus safety.”
UVa’s vice president for student affairs, Patricia M. Lampkin, said that UVa already notifies parents of potentially serious situations involving students with mental illness. The board’s action Saturday, she said, underscores the importance of continuing that practice.
“It is not a big shift away from how we have performed before,” she said. “But this formalizes the policy.”
In other business, the Board of Visitors increased the cost of UVa’s student meal plans by an average of 4.9 percent. This academic year, 8,325 students have purchased a meal plan.
The board also increased tuition for graduate students and raised mandatory student fees. For in-state students, the fees will cost $2,132 in 2008-09, up from $1,825 in 2007-08. For out-of-state students, the fees will total $2,350 in 2008-09, up from $2,060.
The board did not set tuition rates for undergraduate students for the coming academic year. UVa is waiting for Kaine to approve the two-year state budget, which includes a tuition incentive fund that promises public universities more money if they hold down tuition increases.
The board’s executive committee will set the tuition rates in the coming weeks. Leonard W. Sandridge, UVa’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said he expects next year’s tuition to fall within the range listed in the university’s six-year plan.
The plan projects in-state tuition and fees to rise by anywhere from 8.5 percent to 22.1 percent next year. For out-of-state students, tuition and fees are projected to increase between 6.6 percent and 10.5 percent.
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EXPERT GROUP DISCOVERS 5 REASONS WHY COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT SAFE
The SERAPH Research Team, consisting of education and law enforcement experts, has discovered five reasons for unsafe college campuses.
The SERAPH Research Team provides a bi-yearly school-safety report for Congress and in 2006 prepared an assessment of the �The Virginia Tech Review Panel Report�.
In its analysis of security concerns at colleges and universities across the country, SERAPH has determined:
1. Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, police departments across the United States have been training in �active shooter� response. This has been a well-established practice for use in public [K-12] schools.
However, our survey of college and university security directors and police chiefs shows that few have had this training. Two reasons were given: Administrators often do not want to pay for the training or in some cases bar campus security/police from participating in training to avoid what they perceived to be a “militaristic campus atmosphere�.
2. College administrators have no training in security or police operations and as a result micromanage security operations on their campuses. This is problematic because of the obvious delay it causes in response time. In addition, when a college or university has a police department, administrative micromanagement can violate state law regarding obstruction of justice.
3. A proper security audit is vitally important to campus security. However, our survey of security directors / police chiefs indicates that most college administrators will not allow these assessments to be done out of fear of liability exposure and the chance the audit would require changes in management systems.
4. Threat assessment as a science has existed in the United States since the early 1940s. Predication and prevention of violence is a critical aspect of campus security and one that, in SERAPH�s experience, seriously is lacking on higher-education campuses. All Resident Assistants, security / police and department administrators should be trained to identify violent behavior in students, staff and visitors.
A lack of systematic monitoring of people on campus contributes to crime.
5. An emergency plan is only as good as the data in it and the ability of key personnel to use it effectively.
Training is important for the effective management of an emergency by key personnel. You cannot ask untrained people to do what trained people do.
SERAPH Research Team: http://www.seraph.net/about_seraph.html
Why is it that one minute the college student is an adult and no parents are involved in the education or communication process and in another instance the student is refered to as a “child”? Which is it? And if it is a child what about all the other actions taken by the” mentally heathly” children in regard to rapes, drunkeness and drug use? Do you want parents involved with all “children’ or not? Why give this problem to those parents and not deal with these students as adults?
Looks like UVA is still behind on this one.
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