UNC system reviews safety on campuses

July 9 — Last Thursday, a UNC-system task force took the first steps toward squelching student and parent fears about campus safety.

After the recent deaths of two UNC-Wilmington students, a 16-member panel with jobs ranging from admissions director to chief of police met in Chapel Hill to discuss safety.

UNC-system President Molly Broad said the circumstances necessitated a second look at safety on campus. “I think the coincidence of events really demanded that we take a clear and careful look at a variety of issues regarding campus safety,” she said.

Stephen Farmer, senior associate director of admissions at UNC-Chapel Hill, said the task force primarily gathered the background necessary to make future decisions. “It was more in the nature of a general conversation, getting the lay of the land,” he said.

Farmer said the task force was split into two subcommittees — one for admissions and one for campus safety.

Some of the improvements under consideration are criminal background checks of applicants and verification of their answers on applications. Currently, questions on applications on criminal history assume applicants will be honest.

Robert Kanoy, UNC-system associate vice president for access and outreach and head of the task force, said the system needs to audit individual campuses to identify needed improvements. He cited the safety escort program of schools such as UNC-CH as an example of the steps campuses should be asked to take.

“We are going to do a survey and see if anybody else has dealt with these issues on their campuses,” he said.

The task force plans to learn from Texas’ Baylor University, which instituted criminal background checks for transferring athletes after one of its basketball players murdered another last year.

Victor Landry, senior vice president of the system’s Association of Student Governments, said student involvement is too low. Only one student, UNC-Greensboro Student Body President Dara Edelman, is a member of the safety task force.

“I think it is kind of difficult to talk about safety with a bunch of people who only spend a certain amount of time on campus,” he said.

But Broad said students have not been closed out of the task force’s proceedings. Some are comforted by the task force’s first steps toward better safety, but Broad said safety is never ensured.

She said there is no guarantee that new safety procedures will prevent future criminal attacks.

(Editor’s note: In December, the task force released its final report, calling for stronger background checks on applicants who raise “red flags” and the formation of a safety task force on each system campus.)

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.