Tech students avoid campus safety issues VCU takes up campus safety during Rams Day on the Hill Follow Up

Mechelle Hankerson News Editor

Chaneé Patterson Capital News Service

Five years after Virginia Tech made campus safety the focus of lawmakers across the nation, the school seems to be shying away from the issue during this year’s General Assembly session.

While VCU students made campus safety an explicit priority at their “Rams Day on the Hill,” Virginia Tech students participating in “Hokie Day 2012” were hesitant to say the school was focusing on anything except higher education funding.

Students from both schools visited Capital Square last week to present their legislative priorities to state lawmakers.

VCU’s Student Government Association provided participating students a list of talking points and bills on topics ranging from funding to concealed weapons on campus. Tech provided participating students with a folder including an itinerary, two pages of financial figures and a list of legislators and their phone numbers.

VCU’s SGA president, Asif Bhavnagri, said recent events at campuses across the country and specifically at Tech have made student safety an important issue for the urban university in Richmond.

“The dynamic way our university is laid out, it is important that (campus safety) is not forgotten,” Bhavnagri said.

A.J. Palmer, a student senator with the Virginia Tech Student Government Association, said Tech has always made funding the main focus for Hokie Day.

“It has always been about the funding,” said Palmer, who has attended the event the past three years. “I guess there’s this perception that it’s OK to cut higher education funding because we can just raise tuition.”

Tech’s state legislative liaison, Elizabeth Hooper, said students are the driving force behind what issues the university chooses to pursue during any

Bills of Interest to College Students

legislative session.

“We like them to set their own agenda and talk about the things that are important to them,” Hooper said. “This is really their day.”

Tech SGA leaders said students help the association choose what issues to pursue. Campus security was not an issue brought to the SGA by students, they said.

“There’s a lot being done, and students feel like the campus community is really safe because we all depend on each other,” said the Tech SGA Speaker of the House Naomi Dam. “We have this environment where we all feel like members of the family, willing to reach out and extend our help to each other.”

Tech SGA members declined to comment on the omission of campus safety issues from Hokie Day.

According to Hooper, the Tech administration gives students information about the General Assembly session but does not push the students to pursue any issue.

Although it wasn’t addressed at

Here are House and Senate bills that VCU's Student Government Association is tracking:

Hokie Day, Hooper said the school opposes bills that would allow concealed weapons on campus, but officials are “letting the process work itself out.”

“We don’t want to make this about (Tech); this is about all of higher education being safe,” said Hooper, who was at Virginia Tech in 2007 when a student shot and killed 32 people and wounded 25 others before committing suicide.

In addition to campus safety, VCU students focused on telling legislators not to raise tuitions, asking for no discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation and increasing bike lanes and roads in Richmond.

According to SGA legislative issues and civic action chair Virag Patel, VCU also wanted to focus on legislation that would grant money to VCU to help fund Cabell Library renovations.

“Our current library, it was made to only hold 15,000 students, (and) now we have over 30,000 students on campus,” Patel said before the event. “(The) library hasn’t kept up the progress that VCU itself has made.” CT

HB 191, by Delegate Bob Marshall, R-Manassas: Allows full-time faculty members of public institutions of higher education who possess a valid Virginia concealed handgun permit to carry a concealed handgun on campus.

Hb 191 Hb 701

Hb 697

HB 697, by Filler-Corn: Requires the governing board of each college or university to ask students to identify points of contact to be notified if the student experiences a mental health crisis. The policy may require students to waive certain privacy or confidentiality privileges.

HB 701, by Delegate E. Filler-Corn, D-Springfield: Requires the chief law-enforcement officer of a public or private institution of higher education to report the death or an alleged rape of any person on campus property to the law-enforcement agency of the locality in which the institution is located. The local law-enforcement agency would assume responsibility for leading the investigation with cooperation from the college or university.

Hb 852

HB 852, by Delegate J.R. Yost, R-Blacksburg: Makes it clear that an institution of higher education may require students to provide mental health records not only from their high school but also from any other college or university they attended.

HB 853, also by Yost: Requires public community colleges to advise students, faculty and staff how to identify and help students exhibiting suicidal tendencies.Provides that any licensed health professional treating a student may determine to withhold parental notification of a dependent student’s mental health treatment if such professional determines that the notification may result in substantial harm. Currently, only a physician or clinical psychologist could make such a determination.

Hb 853

HB 965, by Delegate Robert B. Bell, R-Charlottesville: Requires campus police to work with a local law-enforcement agency or the State Police in investigating deaths and alleged rapes on college campuses.

Hb 965

HB 967, also by Bell: Includes campus police in various definitions of “law-enforcement officers.”

Hb 967

HB 969, also by Bell: Requires each commonwealth’s attorney to invite campus police chiefs to meetings of sexual assault response teams.

Hb 969

SB 623, by Sen. Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax: Requires public colleges and universities to have agreements with local mentalhealth facilities to coordinate the care of students. The bill would help ensure that school officials are notified when a student is involuntarily committed or is discharged.

Sb 623

SB 624, also by Peterson: Requires public colleges and universities to alert parents whenever the institution receives notification from any source that a student may be suicidal, to the extent permitted by the federal law.