There are times where you see the news, and there are wonderful events that are happening around the world, and then there are times where crises are happening. One such incident has happened, and the case is both quite shocking and tragic. Tragedy hit the University of Alabama – Huntsville when professor, Amy Bishop, went into a faculty meeting in the Biology department and opened fire and killed three individuals. In this situation, the crisis started internally and has been discussed in the traditional, non-traditional, and academic community. The university is acting proactively in addressing this situation by offering counseling for those at the university (faculty, students, etc) while cooperating with federal agencies and the authorities in charge of the case.
There were some clear warning signs that should have been noticed regarding Ms. Bishop. First, some of the students had mentioned that she was acting at times differently and not normally. Each faculty member gets evaluated each semester, and university administrators need to take this into account to see if this is something that needs immediate attention. Plus, the university should have determined if there was going to be any issue in regards of Ms. Bishop not getting tenure, which has been reported the reason why she opened fire during the faculty meeting. If there was also any potential issue or warning sign that might have alerted the university of Ms. Bishop – it would have been the fact that she was charged with “accidentally killing” her brother 20 years ago. Of course, the same news story reported that these files were missing. Where was the university at when they were reviewing applications for this faculty position? This individual had a record and this was not brought up – this was a huge mistake on the part of the university for not addressing this major warning sign. Public relations professionals need to be active in making sure that we are aware of who these individuals are and determine are their key personality characteristics so we can predict who might be a risk or a threat to the university.
What this case shows public relations professionals is that we have been good in proactively addressing the issue if we had a shooting at a university, if the shooter was a student. These measures were taken into consideration after the 2007 school shootings at Virginia Tech. Now, we are addressed with looking not only at students, but looking at others working and operating at the university level. Do the public relations departments at these universities have crisis communication plans for action for a scenario if a professor / instructor is the person responsible for the crime? We have to look at all potential crises that could happen and be prepared to handle them – this case was a horrible event for the University of Alabama – Huntsville, but this shows that universities need to address this scenario and incorporate this into their crisis communication and management plans. My heart and prayers go out to the victims of the shooting, the students and faculty of UofA- Huntsville, and to the community.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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