Category: crisis communications

H1N1 and crisis communications preparedness

If there’s one silver lining in the H1N1 influenza hype cloud, it could be this: All of the attention is giving campus crisis communications teams an opportunity to review their planning measures.

For the most part, campus crisis communications is a reactive sort of exercise. Something bad happens, and we react to it. We put out the fires as they pop up.

But the H1N1 situation hasn’t been like that for most of us.

For most campuses, H1N1 is a gathering storm on the horizon. We’re getting the opportunity to watch it form, and in the process we’re getting a chance to review our crisis communications plans in order to be best prepared if (or when) the virus hits our communities.

That’s what we’re doing, right? Reviewing our plans, meeting with other team members, coordinating with the campus health services and emergency response staff, keeping the campus community informed of preventative measures and, if we’re fortunate enough to have a pandemic response plan for our campus, reviewing that document as well.

Like Dennis Miller, I have mixed feelings about all the media coverage of this strain of influenza. After all, some 30,000 people in the U.S. die from the flu every year. But we’re not going to take any chances. Plus, maybe the heightened awareness will lead people to do what they should always do to reduce the risk of catching a flu bug.

So, yes, we’re using this time of gathering storm clouds to get our act together to effectively communicate as much as necessary.

Here are a couple of new resources to help us out:

  • When to call a flu day, from Inside Higher Ed, discusses how campuses are and should respond to the threat. Quotes one expert who thinks campuses may be overreacting, but adds that these responses are “a natural reaction for colleges to want ‘to appear to be doing something, to appease fears. Universities have a lot to take into account, not just spread of disease, but also making sure that parents know that their children are being taken care of. And college students are in fact seen by their parents as children.'”
  • The official CDC social media toolkit for H1N1 communications, via Mashable. The CDC has fully embraced social media during this situation. Let’s hope we do, too.

Virginia Tech tragedy, two years later

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007. CollegeWebEditor.com’s Karine Joly, who reported on Virginia Tech’s online response to the tragedy so thoroughly two years ago, posts some somber reflections today and ponders whether microblogging, had it been so widespread then as it is now, would have changed the outcome. That’s pure speculation, of course, but it is something to think about.

Karine also asks her readers:

And, to honor the memory of the victims, why not tell us now what you’ve learned or have changed on your campus in terms of emergency notifications or security by posting a comment.

So. What has changed?

On our campus, as on practically every other campus in the nation, we have signed up for a mass notification system that relies on text, phone and email alerts in an attempt to more quickly notify students in the event of a crisis. We’ve tested the system a few times, with decent results, but these notification systems simply cannot speed the messages to a broad community via text in a fast enough time. The bandwidth simply isn’t there. It’s an improvement, but is it enough?

What else has changed? The sense that our campuses must be more open and accountable to the public, especially the families of our students, about our safety measures.

Our universities are also more involved in “profiling” students who might be at risk of committing the same sort of massacre as the disturbed gunman, Seung-Hui Cho.

This more active, early-intervention approach coincides with a change in the public mindset about just how safe our college campuses can be. Most campuses are designed as open, inviting places, so security on a broad scale — in terms of geographic coverage — is a huge challenge. But the public seems to expect us to make our grounds and our facilities as safe as possible. Which raises the question: How safe is “safe”? How much risk can we eliminate? Time magazine talks about this in a sidebar to its feature, Virginia Tech, Remembered.