Security Flaws Found On Campuses Across Nation

Jun 19, 2007 3:33 PM

The University of Washington devised a plan six years ago to protect students and faculty after a struggling medical resident shot to death his mentor, then killed himself.

A new safety team would be alerted to all threats. It would move potential victims to a new dorm or office, assign them police protection or take steps such as changing their phone numbers.

In March, when university employee Rebecca Griego told supervisors and campus police that her former boyfriend had threatened her in two recent calls to her office, no one told the safety team.

On April 2, former boyfriend Jonathan Rowan found Griego in her campus office. Emptying his six-shot revolver, Rowan killed Griego, 26, and himself. She was alone at the time.

The murder is one of at least 15 in which colleges have provided flawed security, ignored threats or danger signs or paid insufficient attention to disturbed students, a USA Today analysis of more than 100 college killings since 1991 shows.

The massacre of 32 at Virginia Tech in April, like some of the 15 cases, fits a pattern of killings committed by isolated, vengeful students who turn homicidal with shocking brutality.

The pattern revealed by campus killings points to broader security flaws at colleges that can contribute to the 2,500 annual rapes and 3,000 annual aggravated assaults at colleges, campus safety experts say.

"Murders can expose flaws in the system that go a lot deeper," says S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, a safety-advocacy group. Campus administrators often do a poor job telling students and one another about threats, Carter said.

At the University of Washington, Rebecca Griego's supervisor "wasn't really aware of the policy" requiring him to notify the safety team, university spokesman Norm Arkans said. Police are trying to figure out why the team wasn't alerted, even after Griego gave university police a copy of a court protection order.

"We try to do the best we can," university police Chief Vicky Stormo says, "and sometimes things just don't go right." She added: "People let their guard down (on campus). People tend to look at the good and don't think that when they see something, maybe there are evil intentions."

That's happened numerous times, according to court records, as summarized by USA Today.

*In January 2002, Peter Odighizuwa shot and killed an administrator, a professor and a fellow student at Appalachian School of Law a day after being asked to withdraw for academic failure. Odighizuwa had threatened students and staff for months, according to former financial-aid officer Chris Clifton. Administrators "just brushed it off," Clifton said.

*In October 2002, Robert Flores, a failing University of Arizona nursing student, fatally shot three of his instructors, including one who had recently sent administrators a "heads up" e-mail warning that Flores "has significant behavioral problems," according to public records. An instructor who was not killed had reported Flores' threats against the school to police, but police never contacted Flores. A dean in charge of discipline never got the report.

*In March 2004, Shuvender Sem, who has a history of mental illness, stabbed to death a fellow student at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa just hours after attacking another student in a classroom. Joel Wysong, the university's dean of men, had taken Sem to his apartment after the first attack "to keep an eye on him," Wysong said in a police statement.

When Wysong left Sem alone in his kitchen, Sem took a paring knife, went to the dining hall and stabbed Levi Butler four times with no provocation.

Some campus officials, particularly professors, are ill-equipped to handle troubled students, experts say.

"The people who might see those behaviors first have the least background in how to deal with it," says University of South Florida criminologist Max Bromley.

The number of potentially troubled students is growing as colleges enroll more people with mental disorders, said Russ Federman, head of University of Virginia psychological services. Those students can function in academia using psychotropic drugs that are increasingly effective.

Seriously disturbed students often "discontinue their medication, and that's the point at which they unravel in violent ways," Federman says.

Colleges say they cannot predict when a troubled student will turn violent. In a one-month span in 2004, two University of North Carolina Wilmington students were murdered by other students who hid their criminal backgrounds on admissions applications. A report by the University of North Carolina found a pattern of applicants with criminal backgrounds lying on applications and suggested better scrutiny of applications.

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