Senate sets policy on missing students

On Sept. 27, GCSU University Senate passed a written policy for situations involving missing students. Under the policy, students over the age of 18 now have the ability to name a confidential contact that will be contacted no later than 24 hours after the student is deemed missing.

“Every university will notify its students with the opportunity to identify a confidential contact,” said Director of Public Safety Dave Groseclose, who also authored GCSU’s policy.

According to the policy, a student is missing when he or she cannot be contacted after reasonable efforts, an act of criminality is involved, the student is in danger, medicine dependence may threaten the student’s life or health, or physical or mental disabilities could cause danger to the student. Other circumstances can also deem students to be considered missing. A GCSU official or the Department of Public Safety must deem the report of a missing student credible.

GCSU has always had a missing student policy, but an amendment to The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act—a federal law that was passed in order to improve safety on college campuses—now requires it to be a written formal policy.

“It basically says that if we have a missing student that comes to our attention, that there are certain procedures we have to do,” said Executive Director of University Housing Larry Christenson. “For (University) Housing, it doesn’t change anything.”

The new addition to the act requires all universities to have a formal policy outlining the steps that will be taken when a college is notified about a missing person. The formalized missing persons procedure for GCSU is to contact Public Safety after a person is reported missing. During the investigation various items of information will be gathered and documented in a police incident report. Some of the items recorded include names, locations, as well as time and dates last seen or contacted.

Vice President of Student Affairs Bruce Harshbarger would be contacted after an officer’s attempt to contact the missing student has been unsuccessful. If the incident occurs within University Housing, Christenson would be contacted.

GCSU has been successfully dealt with missing students in the past.

A form will be sent to all current students of GCSU giving them the opportunity to name a confidential contact. This person would be the first number that will be called if a student is deemed to be missing. Groseclose highly encourages informing someone after you name them as a confidential contact.

“We’ve always done this,” Christenson said. “It’s just formally publishing the procedure.”

Posted by MarkWatkins on Oct 1 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.