Inside Higher Ed is running this morning a must-read piece for communication professionals titled “Evaluating the Response.”
Written by Andy Guess, this article reviews the tragic events from a crisis communication standpoint, provides a link to the University Relations crisis communication plan (last updated in February 2002) used Monday, and offers some light on the challenges the VT Communication team faced that day:
The plan’s guidelines on contacting students during a crisis don’t appear to weigh the possibility of an impending disaster, suggesting publication in the student paper, The Collegiate Times, the Internet, e-mail, radio, fliers and even “mass meetings.†It continues, “Dedicated phone lines with taped messages can also be set up by Communications Network Services. A voice mail broadcast to all resident students can be issued by contacting Communications Network Services….â€
As a result, the university had to improvise. “I would say [the guidelines] were adapted, because the crisis communication plan helps identify who should be at the table, where to meet, when to meet, how to meet,†said Mark Owczarski, director of news and information at Virginia Tech. “As soon as that team is convened, you have the sharing of information from all the parties engaged in that crisis.â€
The plan, for instance, states that the “core crisis team†should first “designate a spokesperson,†suggesting the associate vice president for university relations. But on Monday, as Owczarski pointed out, there were more than a few officials speaking on behalf of Virginia Tech — from the president, Steger, up to Gov. Tim Kaine (through his own staff from Tokyo, where he was at the time) and President Bush during a news conference. “I do think you have to adapt to the situation at hand; that situation frankly changes hourly,†Owczarski said.
This article also highlights some of the people who have been criticizing VT crisis response and its website:
Some of those criticizing offer businesses that provide advice or services of the sort they say the university needed. Christopher Simpson, the CEO of SimpsonScarborough, a higher education branding and communications strategy firm, focused specifically on what he saw as a lackluster online response from the university. “There was very little information on that Web site for the first four to five hours,†said Simpson, who has advised colleges during public relations crises. “We know if you tried to call into Tech yesterday, most cell phones would not work. If I’m trying to call my son or daughter and can’t get them, the next place I’m going to try is the Web. So I think they failed in using the Web, which is your most important and valuable communication tool, certainly for the first six to seven hours of this crisis.â€
As I explained in my first post about the tragedy, I wasn’t able to follow the unfolding of this crisis Monday morning, I posted what I retrieved after the facts — at 9:58AM, a short message alert on the homepage linking to a news page that I couldn’t retrieve –, so I’d be interested to find out more about what is referred as “very little information on that Web site” in the IHE piece.
Can anybody (Mr. Simpson, maybe, as he is a new reader of this blog) share more details with all of us?