3 Strategies to Move Toward Holistic Campus Safety

Recent events related to police brutality, mental health, and the global pandemic are causing shifts in the public eye regarding on-campus police. As conversations surrounding campus policy and safety are on the rise, campus communities and institution leaders are struggling to balance stakeholder questions and concerns about the role of police on campus.

EAB held a roundtable, Beyond the Blue Light System: Three Imperatives for Holistic Campus Safety, which explored strategies for transitioning to a more holistic stakeholder-centric campus safety approach. Discover the three imperatives that leaders should follow for holistic campus safety.

Review the key takeaways

1. Develop a shared vision for campus safety

Stakeholders bring valuable, but often competing viewpoints to the table. Reconciling these diverse perspectives seems daunting, but it’s critical for developing a safety vision that reflects the needs of all constituencies.

Steps to gather and reconcile stakeholder inputs

1. Establish a shared understanding of and vision for campus safety across the leadership team and the campus community.
2. Engage diverse campus stakeholders in discussions about campus safety.
3. Create a space to discuss and understand current issues, questions, or challenges associated with holistic campus safety.

For example, Portland State University (PSU) and the University of Iowa both launched committees to reimagine campus safety in summer 2020. PSU formed five task forces and prioritized transparency by publicly sharing meeting transcripts and recordings on their website. Iowa took a design thinking approach by prototyping alternative models for campus safety, which they shared with the campus community.

2. Align structures and staffing with strategy

Many campuses have long-standing organizational structures and outdated staffing models that impede the progress toward a holistic safety approach. Organizational barriers to executing a shared safety vision include:

Steps to align structures and staffing with strategy

1. Reorganize organizational and reporting structures to support efficient operations.
2. Enhance cross-campus collaboration and/or communication through ongoing partnerships with institutional stakeholders.
3. Consistently examine staffing and operational structures to address current issues, questions, or challenges associated with holistic campus safety.

3. Modernize safety policies and procedures

In response to shifting stakeholder preferences and demands, some leaders already started auditing safety practices to look for procedures not in tune with their changing campus context.

Steps to modernize safety policies and procedures

1. Audit current campus safety policies and practices. Identify opportunities for improvements based on today’s campus climate.
2. Identify and implement communication processes to inform stakeholders, increase transparency, and/or enhance community input and dialogue.
3. Implement a regular cadence of evaluating policies and procedures to ensure that current issues, questions, or challenges are addressed holistically.