SUNY Oneonta’s President Mishandles Student Death
I received this forward today from a student at the State University of New York - Oneonta campus:
From: Students Enrolled in the Current Semester on behalf of BROADCAST
Sent: Mon 3/19/2007 12:34 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Announcement from the President’s OfficeTo: The Campus Community
From: The President’s Office
March 19th, 2007
It is with deep regret that I announce that one of our students was found dead in her residence hall room this morning. The case is currently under investigation by University Police but preliminary details indicate that the death was not caused by assault or violence. The Counseling Center is offering aid to all students affected by this situation.
The student’s name will not be released until the family has been
notified. [ed. note: bold added]Alan B. Donovan
This e-mail is clearly an attempt to stave off fears about related acts of violence on campus, but a pseudo-press release without any real facts (other than a reporting a female student’s death) generates the type of viral talk it intends to squelch. Whereas they may have eliminated speculation of foul play and a general threat to student safety, they have also invited gossip about the student’s cause of death. This quick intervention (just a few hours after discovery) may be well-intentioned, but it is classless, harmful and disrespectful. Notifying appropriate parties takes precedence over halting a rumor mill - especially when the college’s actions fuel another.
Donovan, SUCO’s President, should - but probably doesn’t - realize the profound lack of respect he and his office have shown toward the student and her family. The family should be outraged.
President Donovan should be ashamed of these actions and amend crisis-handling policies appropriately. If those policies are already in place and this was an administrative slip-up, disciplinary action, including an apology, is in order.
Hello, I am a sophomore currently enrolled at State University of New York, Oneonta. I stumbled upon your site quite trying to find more information concerning what happened. After asking some people on campus, it appears that about half of the students on the list-serve were never delivered this email. Perhaps Donovan tried to undo the damage, but was an itsy bit late?
Shocking news. I can only hope this foul email doesn’t make it worse.
So how would you have handled it? You don’t know if or why the student’s parents were not able to be notified before the e-mail was sent. For you to criticize without a full set of facts is just lip flapping. You proposed no alternative solution as to how the school needed to address an immediate issue of handling the communication internally. Finally, you presume to know that the timing of this e-mail was important to them and made any type of difference in this situation.
Manya,
This post is nearly two years old, but I don’t have a problem discussing it now - I remember all the details. I’ll parse your comment.
“So how would you have handled it?”
There are a few links that might shed more light on this situation:
http://www.matthewktabor.com/2007/03/19/suny-oneonta-mishandles-crisis-part-ii/
http://www.matthewktabor.com/2007/03/21/suny-oneonta-mishandles-crisis-part-iii/
The most relevant link is a follow-up I wrote that cites a piece from InsideHigherEd about responding to tragedies. Unfortunately, colleges have dealt with these situations so often and for so long that most schools have fine-tuned their policies.
http://www.matthewktabor.com/2007/04/09/when-a-student-dies-insidehigheredcom-and-suny-oneonta/
“You don’t know if or why the student’s parents were not able to be notified before the e-mail was sent.”
Yes, I do know that the student’s parents were not able to notified before the e-mail was sent. Please read those other links.
“For you to criticize without a full set of facts is just lip flapping.”
I can’t write about all the details of situations like this - which reminds me, this is one of the only post series in 300,000 words of writing on this site that I’ve had to edited. At a certain point, I had to delete some specifics and names because I thought that was best for the friends and family - and it didn’t affect the substance of my points, or the news of it all, in any way.
But you’ve assumed that the facts aren’t there. Please, don’t assume that - if you’ve got any concerns, ask. You might be surprised.
“You proposed no alternative solution as to how the school needed to address an immediate issue of handling the communication internally.”
I wrote this post about 30 minutes after the e-mail came out because a concerned SUNY Oneonta student e-mailed it to me. It was presented as news, with a tiny bit of commentary - it wasn’t a reflective problem-solving piece.
That is, however, why I followed up with additional posts - to explore this issue.
There are solid lessons that SUNY Oneonta can learn. An associate provost at Texas Southern University said in that IHE piece, “For instance, [the provost] says university leaders should know a family’s wishes before deciding whether to send an e-mail about the death to all students, or to take a more targeted approach in alerting various segments of the campus body.” Former President Donovan would’ve done well to follow those guidelines.
Also, I sent e-mails to SUNY Oneonta staff to discuss the issue as well as a few paper letters. To date, I haven’t received any sort of response to any of them.