So when the first news came (via text from my daughter who had just driven by campus and saw all the police) the shock and horror are considerably more intense than hearing of other school shootings — as horrible as each and every one are.
As an alum, I could not be prouder of my alma mater, which is showing its true character to the world in this time of grief and anguish. Here are a few things that standout:
- The reaction of the student body in coming together, the prayers services, their behavior and their care for each other I believe was loudly communicated and clearly impressed folks like the police, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and the media, which did quite a remarkable job of showing the nature of this tight little community.
- The communications team participated in the unfolding story through Twitter, Facebook and its website (more on this in a bit).
- University President Dan Martin communicated very well in his hastily prepared press conference and conveyed the important key messages of "their hope is in their Savior the Lord Jesus Christ" and the importance of the community coming together to support each other and share their grief.
There was only one quite striking rumor that took hold and was sustained for some time: The white pickup believed to belong to the suspect was, it was wrongly said, registered to parents of an SPU student. This of course led followers, me included, to fear that the shooter was an SPU student, which turned out not to be the case. It seems to me that this was an important bit of misinformation that the SPU team could have and perhaps should have caught and corrected.
Through my contacts at SPU I know the communication team worked extremely hard (and is still at it) — particularly the Web and social media team. Many were there until 3 a.m. putting information out. And overall I believe they did an excellent job. However, I did observe some things that could have been better. So off with my SPU-fan hat and on with the ignorant pundit hat:
Twitter: I was so glad to see it being used and it has been used aggressively in the aftermath. But during the event the tweets were few and far between. That let others tell the story, and there were plenty of them so it wasn't missed that much. Still, important opportunities were missed, such as the rumor management mentioned above.
President Martin's press conference: There's very little to criticize and having done media training recently, as typical most of the criticism is not about what was said but about opportunities missed. His presentation was effective, it was clear his own emotion was very near at hand (which was good). While some key messages came across quite clearly, it seems those could have been tightened. The empathy and concern for the shooting victims and those most affected by the event did not get communicated as I would have liked to have seen.
Student alert texts: It's great that SPU has a text alert system that was used promptly in this event. Students were told of the lockdown and I believe quite early on that it was a shooting event. But the biggest problem, emphasized by a student doing a live cellphone interview with a local TV station, was that there was no update. She said it was stifling hot in the room where they were locked in, they did not know how long they would be locked in, and had no updates via text since the initial lockdown message. I see this as one of the biggest lapses in an otherwise stellar effort.
Parent communication (and other stakeholders): I'm a strong believer in stakeholder-first communication. I am not privy to all that happened with stakeholder communication but talking to one parent I was shown the email message that was sent to parents. It was sent on Saturday — two days after the event and was the only email. I was also told that parents got several text messages from the school during the event including the involvement of a shooter but I haven't been able to look at that or confirm it. Given what little I know, it seems that this could have been substantially improved. Using some of the communication technology available makes it very easy to send updates to all audiences simultaneously via email, text and automated phone calling. If this kind of event doesn't call for that all-out effort, I'm not sure what does qualify.
Organization: Again, I'm shooting in the dark here, but it seems that the burden of the communications work fell on just a few in an office that has many other communication people available. I'm suspecting this is a crisis planning and organizational structure issue. It's one I see continually in an organization's planning — they just don't seem to realize that responding to a crisis requires a lot more qualified people and a different kind of structure than daily operations. If you try to apply that, the bulk of the work falls on just a few who simply cannot do it all, while others perfectly capable and willing stand on the sidelines.
Those comments aside, I again congratulate all the wonderful folks at SPU for a job well done in a very frightening event. Speaking for every other alum I have spoken to about this: We are so proud of you.
