Announcing the 2014 NaBITA Whitepaper: Threat Assessment in the Campus Setting

Please visit NaBITA at this link to read this year's seminal resource.

Campus SaVE Act: 2 Viewpoints

Campus SaVE

A LOT of campus professionals have been asking questions and talking about the Campus SaVE Act. Below are 2 viewpoints for you to gain insights from - one from Connie Kirkland and one from Brett Sokolow.

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Brett A. Sokolow, Esq. quoted in Tulsa World

Sex Crimes Now a Title IX Issue for Universities

Brett Sokolow is the executive director of ATIXA (The Association of Title IX Administrators). He also serves as outside counsel for Oklahoma.

On Wednesday, it was discovered that OU starting linebacker Frank Shannon was included in a Title IX sexual misconduct allegation report.

Sokolow could not go into details surrounding any specific case, but he said he has trust in OU's handling of the situation.

"For two years, I've served the university as an outside counsel," said Sokolow, who is also president and CEO of the NCHERM Group, a law and consulting firm focused on systems-level solutions for safer schools and campuses.

"We worked very hard to craft policy and procedures very much compliant with federal standards ... the staff has undergone a ton of training and I have a lot of faith and confidence in them."

Click here to read the full article.

UM System announces hiring of national consultant to provide guidance to sexual assault and mental health services task force

National Center for Higher Education Risk Management to provide third-party assessment of sexual assault and mental health services resources on the four campuses

The University of Missouri System will be employing the services of one of the nation’s top higher education risk management consultants as the latest milestone in its commitment to a safe, secure and respectful campus environment. President Tim Wolfe announced today the hiring of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM) group, a law and consulting practice that has served the higher education field for 15 years, to provide a third-party assessment of the materials collected by the sexual assault and mental health services task force that list the sexual assault and mental health services resources on the four campuses.

The NCHERM group, which currently represents 35 colleges and universities as outside counsel while providing consulting services to more than 3,000 clients, offers expertise for high-risk campus health and safety issues such as sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, Title IX and student suicide, among many other issues. The group will be reviewing and assessing the volume of materials detailing resources on the four campuses collected by the task force, and providing an independent analysis of those resources which will be used in the task forces’ final recommendations.

  

“We are pleased to be able to utilize the expertise of the nationally-renowned NCHERM group, whose credible, independent analysis of our current resources will help us to improve in the way we serve people on our four campuses in terms of sexual assault prevention, reporting and education, and mental health service delivery,” President Wolfe said. “We will be examining their analysis and, together with the task force’s recommendations, the findings of the independent counsel and my recent executive order strengthening our Title IX reporting policy, will better be able to foster a campus culture of safety and respect.”

“We are looking forward to working closely with the NCHERM group as we continue to address these issues that are critical to the safety and security of our four campuses,” said Steve Owens, General Counsel for the University of Missouri System. “Our goal in this comprehensive self-examination process is to make the University of Missouri a model of safety on our campuses and on Title IX reporting and compliance, and have other universities to look to our university as the standard of how to approach these difficult, societal issues.”

The hiring of the NCHERM group is the latest step in the university’s systematic process to improve as an organization in terms of reporting and preventing sexual assault, and mental health service delivery. Since January, President Wolfe established the task force, which completed the first phase of its work by inventorying all the sexual assault/mental health services resources on the four campuses and is now onto phase two, which is assessing those resources; the University of Missouri Board of Curators hired the Dowd Bennett Law Firm, an outside independent counsel, to investigate if university employees acted consistent with policy and the law in the matter of Sasha Menu Courey, a former MU student-athlete that later committed suicide, and; President Wolfe issued an executive order that strengthens the university’s Title IX reporting procedure for employees in cases where a student is the victim of an alleged sexual assault or harassment.

“Every college and university in the country is facing challenges with prevention and response to campus sexual violence,” said Brett A. Sokolow, Esq., President and CEO of the The National Center for Higher Education Risk Management Group, LLC. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to partner with the University of Missouri System and its four state universities to help them to become exemplars not just of compliance, but of excellence, in the face of this challenge.”

Click here to read the full press release.

Brett A. Sokolow, Esq. quoted in Inside Higher Ed

Fall From Safety

Colleges have started retrofitting more dorms to get up to local safety codes over the past decade, said Brett A. Sokolow, president and chief executive officer of the NCHERM Group, a law firm and consulting group for colleges. Many of those upgrades are relatively low-cost, but colleges still have to work to curb the potential for falls when student drinking happens in high-rise residence halls. “For campuses that allow students to congregate on those balconies, their lawsuit is just around the corner,” he said.

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Michelle Issadore, Affiliated Consultant, quoted in MintPress

Calif. Student's Stand for Trauma Survivors Triggers Furor Over Academic Freedom

Michelle Issadore, a consultant with the NCHERM Group, which advises colleges on risk management, told MintPress that she sees trigger warnings as a way “of further including and involving faculty in students’ lives outside the classroom. However, these warnings may lose efficacy if they are ubiquitous across all courses, even those where such topics are unlikely to arise.”

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Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D. and W. Scott Lewis, J.D.: Co-authors in Violence and Gender Journal

Costuming, Misogyny, and Objectification as Risk Factors in Targeted Violence

In many recent incidents of premeditated mass shooting the perpetrators have been male and dressed in black, and may share other characteristics that could be used to identify potential shooters before they commit acts of mass violence. Risk factors related to the antihero, dark-knight persona adopted by these individuals are explored in an article in Violence and Gender, a new peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Violence and Gender website.

In the article “Costuming, Misogyny, and Objectification as Risk Factors in Targeted Violence,” Brian Van Brunt, EdD and W. Scott Lewis, The NCHERM Group, LLC (Malvern, PA), suggest reasons why persons who commit mass shootings are drawn to dark popular culture imagery, how these cultural factors may contribute to the violence, and what risk factors could be useful to law enforcement and behavioral investigation teams seeking to identify individuals who might be preparing for an attack.

“‘Objectification’ of victims and ‘costuming’ are specific offender behaviors that will give threat assessment teams throughout the world greater insights into the motivation of mass shooters and just how ceremonial their preparations are,” says Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Violence and Gender and Senior FBI Profiler/Criminal Investigative Analyst (ret.). “The value of this information in being able to identify these offenders beforehand based on their behavior so that we can prevent future acts of mass murder is very significant.”

Click here to read the full article.