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Making Sense of Campus Shootings:

Policies, Practices and PreventionJames Alan Fox

The Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice, and

Professor of Law, Policy and Society

June 25, 2008

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April 16, 2007

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The Death Toll Rises…

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“The Deadliest”

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An Undeserved Stage… and the contagion effect

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Identify with Victims or Perpetrator?

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76 campus homicides, 2000-2005

Sex of Victim Sex of OffenderMale 61.3% Male 90.8%Female 38.7% Female 9.2%

Victim Role Offender RoleStudent 57.3% Student 35.5%Faculty 9.3% Former student 5.3%Staff 9.3% Outsider 32.2%Child 5.3% Undetermined 27.0%Other 18.7%

Victim/Offender Relationship WeaponPartner 12.5% Gun 52.2%Friend 28.3% Knife 11.6%Acquantance 6.6% Personal 21.7%Stranger 27.6% Other 14.5%Undetermined 25.0%

Sources: FBI. DOE, Newspaper coverage

Some Facts from Fox…

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Far from the Greatest Peril

On average, 10 college students are murdered annually on campus

1,000 college students commit suicide annually

Thousands more deaths annually due to substance abuse

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Safety First?

“Is your campus safe?” Newsweek, August 20-27 2007

Parents ask about “lockdown”

A new college selection criterion

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“Campus Lockdown”: The latest catch-phrase

From correctional nomenclature

Very few episodes include multiple locations

Timeliness

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A New Instructional DVD for Students…

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Special Back to School Apparel

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Active Shooter & Lockdown DrillsECSU’s blunder in its

“active shooter” exercise

Training is fine, but do not involve the students

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Lesson from the Airlines

We can learn from airline passenger preparedness

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The “Few Bad Apples” Theory

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Profiling is Problematic

No clear-cut profile

Predicting rare events is virtually impossible

False positives

Only hindsight is 20/20

Cast a wide net

Many are obvious—and then may be too late

May intensify feelings of persecution

Problem may be structural or situational

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Mental Health Services

Increase in counseling staff and budgets over past year

Student-to-counselor ratio still falls short

Ratio of Campus Mental Heath

Counselors to FTE Students

2007 average

1969-to-1

Recommend level

1500-to-1

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Student Centeredness

Student centeredness is more than just words

The caring need not wait until a tragedy occurs

Training faculty and staff to handle difficult people and situations

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Date School Shooter, Age Role at SchoolNovember 1,

1991University of Iowa Gang Lu, 28 Graduate student

December 14, 1992

Simon’s Rock College Wayne Lo, 18Undergraduate

student

January 26, 1995University of North

CarolinaWendell Williamson,

26Former law student

August 15, 1996San Diego State

UniversityFrederick Davidson,

36Graduate student

June 28, 2000University of

WashingtonJan Chen, 42 Medical student

August 28, 2000 University of ArkansasJames Easton Kelly,

36Former graduate

student

May 17, 2001Pacific Lutheran

UniversityDonald Cowan, 55 None

January 16, 2002Appalachian School of

LawPeter Odighizuwa, 42 Former law student

October 28, 2002 University of Arizona Robert Flores, 40 Graduate student

September 2, 2006

Shepherd UniversityDouglas Pennington,

49Parent of students

April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech Seung-Hui Cho, 23Undergraduate

student

February 8, 2008 Louisiana Tech Latina Williams, 23Undergraduate

student

February 14, 2008

Northern Illinois University

Steven Kazmierczak, 27

Former graduate student

Who are the Rampage Shooters?

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The Broad View

• Increased emphasis on student centeredness and on upgrading counseling and support services may not eliminate the already low likelihood of a campus shooting. Regardless, it will go a long way to enhance the well-being of thousands of students.

• Many of these strategies are the right thing to do, even though sometime done for wrong reason.

• The only option for students seeking a 100% guarantee for eliminating any risk of being victimized by a campus shooting….

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A Risk-Free Education

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Thank You!