President Andrew K. Benton’s email last Tuesday informed the community of the decision to ban his son Chrisopher, 27, from campus for “a long time” after his son was arrested at the administration building for making threats to his family. The status of this decision now hinges on the university’s Threat Assessment Team.
The email about the Threat Assessment Team (TAT) offered a glimpse not only into the Bentons’ personal lives but also into the existence of such a team.
“As always, we gathered the facts, we assessed the risk, and developed a plan to manage that risk for the future,” chair of Pepperdine’s TAT Phil E. Phillips wrote in an email to the Graphic. “As you know, campus safety remains Pepperdine’s paramount concern. Due to the unfortunate recent circumstances, Chris Benton is prohibited from accessing all Pepperdine campuses until such time, if ever, that the University’s Threat Assessment Team concludes that it is safe to allow his return. Of course, our thoughts and prayers remain with the Benton family.”
Pepperdine added the TAT 13 years ago, before the field surged following the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy. Since 2007, it’s reported that about 80 percent of colleges nationwide have adopted some form of a threat assessment team. These teams are likely to function through multiple disciplines.
“We bring together different perspectives: public safety, insurance and risk, legal, student affairs, mental health, academic, and administration, along with external threat assessment professionals,” Phillips wrote. “We also work closely with local and federal law enforcement.”
Most members of the committee train regularly with the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) and the FBI’s Threat Assessment Regional Evaluation Team (TARGET).
But the committee’s results are often hard to evaluate when the job often gives the impression that nothing has happened.
The university’s response is usually comprehensive and swift, according to Phillips. Student privacy laws also obscure the TAT’s success when mental health, employment and grades are called into question. FERPA, for the privacy of students’ education records, and HIPPA, for the privacy and security of individuals’ health information, are the two federal laws that typically come into play for threat assessment teams. Naturally, the TAT also holds a representative from the General Counsel. This form of violence protection relies on students, faculty and staff to submit confidential reports about unusual or risky behavior.
The TAT’s main objective is to collect the facts surrounding perceived threats, determine whether it exists, and if so, whether it poses a low, moderate or high risk.
“Because of concerns about privacy and in respect for the dignity of those involved in a particular situation, the TAT necessarily limits the distribution of relevant information to those who have a legitimate need to know,” Phillips said.
Questions about Pepperdine’s own threat-assessment committee coincide with news of James E. Holmes, charged in the Aurora, Colo., deadly mass shooting, reportedly being recommended to the University of Colorado-Denver’s own threat-assessment team by his director of student mental health services. Jared Lee Loughner, the Tucson, Ariz., shooter who pled guilty to killing six people and wounding 13 others, was also formerly identified as a person of concern by his community college’s assessment team.
The TAT considers about 15 to 25 cases per year.
“A number of these involve individuals who need help, and the TAT has assisted in getting that help,” Phillips said. “It may be providing access to health care, counseling, making individuals aware of conduct expectations, helping individuals become self-aware of how their conduct may be perceived by others, and so forth.”
Under the Clery Act, signed in 1990 and amended in 2008, Pepperdine must issue timely campus alerts and warnings for any crimes that represent a safety threat. It also requires virtually all institutes of higher education to submit annual crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education, as well as to publish an annual security report to prospective and current students and employees. Because of the Clery Act, DPS reports are open to public inspection.
