Four weeks ago, a college dropout with a history of mental instability and threatening behavior walked into a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, Ariz., and opened fire on the crowd.
Although events as violent as this are uncommon at UCLA, they are likely to make people more aware of their surroundings and increase reports of potentially violent individuals, said university police Sgt. Mark Littlestone, who works in the workplace violence division of UCPD .
Although some students said these events would not make them more likely to report other students as being threatening, it does cause them to notice more suspicious activity.
“It definitely makes you more aware of your surroundings, and especially as this is a public campus, I don’t know who is a student and who isn’t,” said Yelya Ortega, a third-year Chicana/o studies student.
The Crisis Response Team, which handles faculty and staff reports, and the Consultation & Response Team, which handles student reports, meet during the year to discuss potentially violent or troubled people and work to prevent events such as the Tucson shooting from happening on campus.
Both groups work on the basis of referrals: Someone will communicate anxiety about the well-being of either a faculty member or a student, and the groups will then meet to discuss the person, said Robert Naples, associate vice chancellor and dean of students.
On the Consultation & Response Team, members from UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services meet with the assistant vice chancellor’s office, a police representative and several others to discuss students who may be distressed but are not necessarily violent, said Liz Gong-Guy, director of CAPS.
During the 2009-2010 school year, 116 cases were addressed by the Consultation & Response Team.
Of those, only eight required intervention by counselors and police because of a perceived threat to either the student in question or to others in the community, Gong-Guy added.
“Although there aren’t many of them, in all of the cases where we had a specific reason to act very proactively, we did so in 100 percent of the cases,” Gong-Guy said.
Although there are a number of resources available to students who are found to be troubled or in distress, there are very few cases in which students can be made to use these resources.
The group reviews all concerns that come its way, but much of the time, all it can do is make recommendations.
“A lot of cases have some people reporting concerns, but nothing has actually happened. We hold on to those reports, but unless there’s a point at which this person has provided a significant threat, we just keep watching,” Gong-Guy said.
Although some students say that they think this method is efficient and has been working, other students said they were also concerned about the group’s potential for infringement of privacy.
For Celeste Morgan, a fourth-year anthropology student, although the system can work effectively, there is a threat that it can be abused, because administrators can choose to look into students’ private information without having a probable cause to do so.
Littlestone said every effort is made to protect a student’s privacy, and many departments on campus do not speak to the group because of their policy.
The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and CAPS are not allowed to speak about individual cases because of their confidentiality agreements with patients, Littlestone said.
According to Nan Levine-Mann, co-director of UCLA’s Staff and Faculty Counseling Center, the faculty crisis team considered 22 cases last year that required a full team meeting, but only six of those cases were deemed serious enough to warrant an intervention.
Members of both the Crisis Response Team and the Consultation & Response Team said they have noticed an increase in stress over the last couple of years, due in part to the economic crisis, as well as to increased pressure in the university environment.
“Many years ago, people thought that when you began work at UCLA, then you can work there forever. But … with the economic crisis, people’s basic security is being threatened, and the pressure sometimes makes them act out,” said Jorge Cherbosque, co-director of the Staff and Faculty Counseling Center.
Beside economic problems and worries about tuition increases, the tough university environment places more pressure on students than in previous years, Gong-Guy said.
“As the academic environment has become increasingly competitive, students feel more pressured to succeed. … Combine that with a tricky transition coming to college, and it’s a lot to manage,” she said.
Although a higher stress level does not necessarily lead to more violence on campus, Gong-Guy said that it does make for a less pleasant environment for working and studying.