Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Opinion
Does UCLA Have a Campuswide, Integrated Crisis Plan?
12/13/2006
D'es UCLA have a crisis plan or a crisis management system in place to handle an issue like this, which becomes much more than just an IT problem? A quick Google search d'esn't find me one, and the staff there is way too busy for me to be able to get an answer from a real person on short notice. I sure hope so, though. UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams says, "We take our responsibility to safeguard personal information very seriously. My primary concern is to make sure this d'es not happen again and to provide to the people whose data is stored in the database important information on how to minimize the risk of potential identity theft and fraud."
Few things are as valuable to the United States as college campuses and what takes place on them and around them. The time has come for college and university campuses to be prepared to handle physical, human, and reputational crises in an integrated fashion. UCLA's pain may end up goading other institutions to be better prepared, whether by the example of being better prepared at UCLA, or not.
If Chancellor Abrams' statement is part of a campus wide crisis communications plan that is itself integrated into a campus wide crisis plan, with a knowledgeable UCLA crisis management team in charge, then we might not be still reading about the UCLA “debacle” in six months. I hope there is such an integrated crisis management system at UCLA. From what I can see from the outside, there very well may be. If not, unless UCLA gets lucky, things could turn down the path that they did last year at Ohio University. Let's hope not.
P.S. My “day job” employer, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), is right this moment working with professors Michael Diamond and Ian Mitroff of the University of Southern California, conducting a survey of chief academic officers regarding how prepared their campuses are for major crises. If you can persuade a provost or two to follow the links we've already sent them to our survey, and to complete it (10 minutes) it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Technology and Campus Services
Can auxiliary services be mission-critical? You bet they can. With tuition on the rise, Auxiliary Services departments at a variety of colleges and universities are proving that they can innovate and still save their parent institutions cash.
- Ad It Up
Commercials on television tend to enrage me and laugh tracks are guaranteed to give me a headache. Plus, where do people find the time to watch TV?
- What Is the Purpose of an Electronic Portfolio? Is the Answer the Key to Your Successful Implementation?
Among many themes, Margaret Price explores the theme of purpose in her Viewpoint. One purpose of ePortfolio is to reflect on change from a beginning to a later point in time. In a future Viewpoint, Margaret will return to the SpEl.Folio and we’ll see how her thinking and her project have evolved.
- Making Faculty Smarter about Smart Technology
If you’re not also enabling the ‘why’ or ‘what’ behind the tech tools you give your faculty, you’re not enabling effective use of those tools.
- Smashing the Shackles of Intentionally Dysfunctional Technology
Until last week, it hadn’t "clicked" inside my head that the Library of Congress could or would make specific exemptions to copyright laws.
- Response Devices Keep FSU Students Focused
Attendance is up and the number of students dozing off in class is down in Joe Calhoun’s economics classes at Florida State University (FSU). And that’s despite an increase in class size recently, with new lecture halls that seat up to 500 students at a time.
