Violence on campus: Practical recommendations for legal educators

Recent rampage killings compel greater attention to anger and violence on the college campus. In each of these tragic mass murders, vengeful individuals sought to address perceived grievances against faculty and/or other employees of the university. In each of these situations, numerous clues of impending violence were evident. Sadly, however, in each of these cases the schools failed to take preventive actions. While prediction of violent behavior will never be an exact science, universities must begin to enact violence prevention strategies. Maintaining an attitude that 'this couldn't happen here' hampers the necessary education of faculty, staff, and security personnel.

Our purpose in this paper is to provide guidelines for dealing with angry students. Additionally, we will point out characteristics of potentially violent students and suggest some violence prevention measures. Although we will touch on security issues, our goal is to help law educators prevent students from erupting violently rather than to stop a mass murder already in progress.