Category: Updates

Sept. 27, 2022

UW News sat down with Vice President for Campus & Community Safety Sally Clark to talk about how campus leaders are prioritizing the effort to reimagine safety across the university.

Read the interview to learn more.

August 1, 2022

After six months of conversations, research and feedback gathering, Campus Community Safety Project members have compiled recommendations and next steps to charter a new Division of Campus Community Safety. This division will be the new home for first-line safety units, including UW Emergency Management, SafeCampus and UW Police (Seattle campus) beginning September 2022. You can read the full report to the community here.

This month project leadership continued to refine the proposed organizational chart for the new Division of Campus Community Safety. Much of the head-scratching had to do with how the new division’s administrative functions should look in light of the UW’s Finance Transformation project. In practical terms, UWFT means some finance-related jobs at the UW will change and staff may be moved around. Aligning the new division’s finance functions with this model now — a year ahead of the rest of campus — should allow for a smoother transition for the division as a whole.

Additionally, project leadership continued to conduct interviews with other universities that are undertaking reimagining and reorganizing work on their campuses. This month we had conversations with staff at Portland State University and the University of Michigan. The settings and strengths of schools may be different across the country, but the focus on anti-racism; developing effective on-call interventions for people in behavioral health crisis; and creating communities grounded in belonging run through most of the efforts.

In step with interest across all three campuses, the UW Office of the President has approved Phase I funding for developing proposals for effective, unarmed responses for people in behavioral health crisis, starting with the Seattle campus. Combined with support from the U District Partnership, this funding will get the project moving forward with students (through the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative) undertaking research and interviews to build an understanding of current needs and services in the Seattle campus area and what’s working in other cities. Stay tuned for updates. If you would like to get involved, please use the comment form below and include your contact information.

Though largely unseen by the greater campus community, the UW’s three campuses and UW Medicine undertake continuous planning and training for how to react, operate and recover if disaster — natural, structural or human-prompted — strikes. Much of this work is defined by federal and state policies and reflected in the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. Both the UW’s Internal Audit unit and Enterprise Risk Management team are in the midst of reviewing the UW’s emergency management plans and structures. Coupled with the move of the Seattle-based Emergency Management team into a new division focused on campus community safety, now is an ideal time to assess existing plans and delegations of authorities in case quick decisions are necessary.

Before work on the new Campus Community Safety Division began, the UW had an Emergency Readiness Committee. Members met regularly to share information and coordinate activities. That group was recently sunsetted and, starting this summer, the Emergency Management Planning Committee will start meeting. This group will be comprised of decision-makers from key units across the University. A separate staff-level group will be convened for ongoing information sharing and coordination.

Considerations around how the UW prepares for emergencies have helped inform some of the duties and responsibilities of the new Vice President for Campus Community Safety. When it comes time to search for that person, the job duties will include disaster response, operations and recovery.

Additionally, our work on a proposed joint project with students to assess the potential to provide unarmed alternative responders for calls about people in acute mental health crisis continues to progress. We are currently waiting to hear about funding for the first phase – a review of calls for help, what services exist for the Seattle campus and the University District currently, and what callers say they need in terms of services. Special thanks to the City of Seattle Mayor’s Office and the newly established City of Seattle Community Safety and Communications Center for sharing information about their efforts to screen 911 calls for those that could better be answered by skilled intervention teams.

Thank yous: We are grateful to the following individuals and groups for their time in April.

• UW Medicine staff regarding Montlake bus stop safety
• Seattle Mayor’s advisor for public safety
• Director of the new City of Seattle Community Safety and Communications Center
• Faculty Council on Race, Equity & Justice
• Tri-Campus Advisory Board
• Student Advisory Board for the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

Throughout March, we have continued sketching models for how to move units from their existing “homes” in the University’s organizational structure to the future Division of Campus Community Safety. We also launched the search for a new UW Police Department leader.

When not drafting, erasing and re-drawing org chart boxes or tracking down job codes, we research “reimagining.” The UW’s efforts to reimagine public safety are not happening in a vacuum — there is much we can learn from other communities across our nation who are asking the same kinds of questions. As we approach the two-year mark of George Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin, the push nationwide to reexamine community safety in towns, cities, counties and campuses remains high-profile and widespread. Jurisdictions and advocates for alternative models continue to drill down into past failures and propose changes to ensure appropriate screening of calls for help and dispatch of effective services.

If you are invested in campus community safety, we invite you to join us in learning from this boarder conversation. The following are just a few examples of the many, many articles and projects on reimagining definitions of safe communities and safety services:

• American  Progress – The Community Responder Model
• The Atlantic – The Stumbling block to one of the most promising police reforms
• Smart Cities Dive – Los Angeles moves forward with diverting some 911 calls to mental health professionals

Thank yous: We’d like to extend a big thank you to the following groups for discussions this past month:

• UW Medicine faculty Council on Research and Graduate Education
• Health Sciences Facilities security staff
• 2021 Non-Police Crisis Response ad hoc committee
• School of Public Health doctoral students
• Alternative Emergency Services student advocates

After the initial two months of work reimagining and reorganizing, a couple of questions come up regarding the latter: “Why move SafeCampus into the new Division of Campus Community Safety? How will that improve outcomes?”

Better outcomes for students, staff and faculty will need to be proven year after year (we’ll talk metrics in future updates), but there is a theory behind the move, a theory grounded in contemporary debate about how to change the culture of safety services, including expectations of policing.

For those who are unfamiliar, SafeCampus is the University’s violence prevention and response program. Trained staff serve a safety planning and threat assessment function for students, staff and faculty where ever they may be. That means they not only support UW community members at the UW’s three campuses and hospitals, but also students and personnel studying or working outside the United States and even on board UW’s ships at sea. In addition, SafeCampus staff provide important training in violence prevention, and in prevention of sexual harassment and gender discrimination for academic student employees and post docs. Calls to SafeCampus can be made anonymously.

The SafeCampus focus on violence prevention, employing deep listening and paying heightened attention to the experiences and concerns of people of color and people with typically marginalized identities aligns with long-standing calls to reimagine how cities, towns, colleges and universities think about the spectrum of safety needs and effective services.

Under the new Division of Campus Community Safety, SafeCampus will do everything that it does now, but as the cultural heart of a division dedicated to the present and future of campus safety. The SafeCampus manager will be an administrative direct report to a vice president rather than multiple levels down in a division and competing with a raft of other priorities. Nothing changes about when and how SafeCampus communicates case details. SafeCampus would not work cases with UW Police any more than it does now — when a serious threat is identified and requires a broader team approach to prevention and intervention.

Ultimately, the move elevates attention to violence prevention and alternative responses to crises. This is core for reimagining the now and future of public safety.

Thank yous: A big thank you to the teams and individuals who took time to meet in February, including:

• LiveWell (home to the UW’s confidential advocates)
• Student Conduct Office
• Faculty Council on Gender Equity and Justice
• UWPD officers and sergeants at Feb. 2 roll calls

Furthering the conversation: This episode of the Hidden Brain podcast focuses on the work of Yale professor and psychologist Philip Ariba Goff who studies the relationship between race and policing in the United States. In an hour, it covers a lot of ground regarding expectations of police, the expectations we have of each other, and what progress can look like. It’s a great listen.

After a formal launch by President Cauce in December, the University of Washington’s rethinking of expectations and approaches to safety services for people and places is underway. This work is the result of years of listening sessions and dialogue about both the decentralized way the University approaches safety-related programs and policing, and it takes place in the greater context of the national reckoning with race and policing. It also recognizes that the ongoing pandemic presents further challenges for emergency planning and resiliency. While this project will have important near-term milestones, the reimagining work will be long-term; sustained and carried over the years to test potential solutions. The goal is to facilitate holistic planning, prevention, intervention and resiliency through a division focused solely on the safety of campus communities.

A holistic and accountable approach to safety must be responsive to the different needs and the different experiences — some negative — that various community members have had with safety resources and personnel. It must also consider experiences both on and off our campuses. In the near-term, the Campus Community Safety Project will focus on the reorganization of safety-related units (including how to support safety efforts at all three campuses and UW Medicine sites) and building a framework for how the UW better plans for, prevents, intervenes and supports recovery in a variety of situations. Consultation with students, faculty and staff is an integral part of the near-term and long-term work. In January, initial, high-level conversations were started with a variety of groups and key staff, including:

• The Student Wellbeing Collaborative
• The Faculty Council on Race, Equity & Justice
• SafeCampus
• Emergency Management
• OMA&D Student Advisory Board
• Tri-Campus Advisory Board
• School of Medicine
• UWPD leadership and communications staff

Thank you to all who shared your experiences and perspectives during these discussions. Additional staff discussions and wider-audience workshops related to this project are still to come. The Campus Community Safety Project homepage includes a feedback form (below) if you have thoughts or questions.