NCHERM Group Senior Vice President for Professional Program Development, Brian Van Brunt, and Affiliated Consultant, Mary Ellen O'Toole quoted in USA Today College

Social media helps experts understand, prevent school shooters

After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, most colleges, including University of Maryland, have set up teams — usually made up of campus police and administrators — to handle tips related to suspicious student behavior, including anonymous Internet activity, said Brian Van Brunt, president-elect of the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association.

Teams like these have become one of the most effective ways college campuses are dealing with, and preventing, serious violent crimes, Van Brunt said.

Mary Ellen O’Toole, an author and retired FBI profiler, uses another term, “leakage,” to describe a phenomenon where many killers hint or even announce their plans far in advance of carrying them out. Social media has emerged as a new place to do it.

“When you start dealing with young people, college age, high school,” O’Toole said, “they gotta tell you what they’re doing. It’s part of their age.”

“We can learn a lot more about them through that.”

Click here to read the full article.

The NCHERM Group President & CEO, Brett A. Sokolow, quoted in the Columbia Missourian

Title IX Experts Disagree on MU's Obligation in Menu Courey Case

Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, interprets the issue differently. He said the Tribune story didn't contain enough information to trigger an investigation.

The university would have known, Sokolow said, if Menu Courey had informed Meghan Anderson, former MU athletics department academic adviser, of the assault, as Menu Courey wrote in her diary and ESPN reported. Anderson has said that Menu Courey didn't tell her about an assault.

Without a request from Menu Courey or statements from some other witness, the university couldn't reasonably be expected to know about the incident until the ESPN "Outside the Lines" story came out last week, Sokolow said.

"It doesn't sound like the athletic department knew," Sokolow said. "I don't sense a cover-up."

Click here to read the full article.

The NCHERM Group President & CEO, Brett A. Sokolow, interviewed on CNN

Police Investigate Alleged Rape of Collegiate Swimmer Who Died in Suicide

Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said he doesn't get the sense there is any clear evidence of a coverup at this point.

However, he added: "I certainly feel that the university should have been a little more proactive at trying to bring in information and find out more."

Click here to read the full article.

The NCHERM Group President & CEO, Brett A. Sokolow, quoted on ESPN

Mizzou Did Not Pursue Alleged Assault

"At the point that the university's administrators had notice of the alleged rape(s), they had an obligation to investigate, based on the potential harm that the alleged rapists posed and pose to the university community," said Brett Sokolo, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators. "Title IX obligates universities to these actions, and to efforts to remedy the effects of the acts for the victim and the community."

Click here to read the full article.

NCHERM Group Senior Executive Vice President, Daniel Swinton, interviewed by Arise America

Click here to see the video of NCHERM Group Executive Vice President, Daniel Swinton, interviewed by Arise America on The White House announcement and report on campus-based sexual violence (begins at 8:40 mark and runs through 13:40).

The NCHERM Group President & CEO, Brett A. Sokolow, pens response to President Obama's creation of a task force on campus-based sexual violence

Dear President Obama,

I've read very carefully your announcement of a task force on campus sexual violence and the memorandum you signed this week to authorize it.  It's good to know that this topic continues to be a priority for your administration. The goals seem, at first blush, sufficiently noble. They include:

• Provide educational institutions with best practices for preventing and responding to rape and sexual assault.
• Build on the federal government’s enforcement efforts to ensure that educational institutions comply fully with their legal obligations. 
• Improve transparency of the government’s enforcement activities.
• Increase the public’s awareness of an institution’s track record in addressing rape and sexual assault.
• Enhance coordination among federal agencies to hold schools accountable if they do not confront sexual violence on their campuses.

I'm sure the government officials you've appointed will call on subject matter experts so that the work of the task force is truly meaningful. As the task force seeks to learn what recommendations to make (in the brief 90 day window you have set out), I hope that some of these ideas might be among them.

Click here to read the full letter.

Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D., Senior Vice President for Professional Program Development, quoted in Inside Higher Ed

Chipping Away at FERPA?

“FERPA is also understood to have few teeth given the lack of lawsuits under FERPA,” said Brian Van Brunt, senior vice president for professional program development at the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. “This new provision seems to take out even more of the bite.”

“Any higher ed person on the front line will probably appreciate it,” Van Brunt said. “We don’t want to profile and target those with mental illness and treat them differently, we want to identify these problems and work collaboratively with parents to help them be more academically successful.”

Click here to read the full article.

NCHERM Group Partner, W. Scott Lewis, quoted in Inside Higher Ed

Who Protects the Suicidal?

However, OCR’s resolution agreement with Western Michigan, despite the tragic end of the student who prompted it, appears to indicate that the office is not changing its position and intends to enforce it, said W. Scott Lewis, partner at the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management.

“I think we’re in the same place, and that is that the OCR has shown no real desire to back off the idea of reading harm-to-self as a component for involuntary withdrawal,” said Lewis, who is also president and co-founder of the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association. “It’s left schools in a difficult position.”

In the meantime, Lewis said, the most important thing is for campuses to do is make sure they’ve got all the necessary support systems in place – and are using them – for self-harming students who either refuse to leave or who are involuntarily withdrawn and then readmitted. That also means being in close touch with the student’s emergency contact.

“The student comes back, they’re suicidal, you have to take them and then they harm themselves – the question that’s going to be asked is, what kind of support did you put there?” Lewis said. “I want to be able to say in my own mind and my own heart that we did everything we could.”

Click here to read more.