Excerpt from the Wright State Guardian
The following letter to the editor was submitted to Wright State President Sue Edwards on Nov. 16, 2023:
The leadership of the American Association of University Professors, Wright State University chapter (AAUP-WSU) and the Student Government Association (SGA) are writing to express a number of concerns — and to request full transparency — regarding the University’s handling of an incident that occurred on Friday, September 15, 2023.
In the aftermath of this incident, several very troubling facts have come to light about campus safety and the quality of Wright State’s Counseling and Wellness Services. It appears that there were several distinct failures within and external to the University. These include:
- The individual responsible for the 9/15 incident entered The Hangar in Allyn Hall carrying a training rifle that was property of the WSU ROTC. This raises serious concerns about the security measures in place at the ROTC facilities.
- While the WSU police department responded promptly to reports of a person with a weapon in Allyn Hall, news of the incident had already begun to spread across the campus and social media. At no point was an “all clear” message sent through the WSU Emergency Alert system; consequently, numerous faculty and students were left sheltering in place, uncertain whether it was safe for them to move about the campus.
- Testimony offered by a current WSU student during the 9/19/23 Special Meeting of the SGA indicated that when the individual responsible for the 9/15/23 incident was released from the Greene County Jail, he was not released into the custody of a family member, physician, or mental health professional. Rather, he was released into the custody of several members of his former fraternity, who were — quite understandably — very uncomfortable with the situation and uncertain of how to deal with it. Their circumstances were made even more uncomfortable because the WSU police department made no effort to contact them before dropping off the individual at their off-campus residence. It was only through these students’ actions that the individual was transported to a mental health treatment facility. When the facility refused to admit him, one of the students put the individual up in a hotel for the night with his own money.
- During the same meeting, numerous students documented the inability of WSU’s Counseling and Wellness Services to meet their needs. They noted, for example, that several friends of the individual responsible for the events of 9/15/23 had reached out with concerns about the student’s mental state and had been largely rebuffed. Other students expressed their own frustrations about their interactions with the university’s mental wellness services, including the lack of available on-campus counseling services and the outsourced care hotline’s tendency to hang up on emergency calls.
We understand that the incident and its aftermath are the subject of an ongoing investigation on the part of WSU’s administration. However, the safety of our campus, and the services available to its faculty, staff, and students are a matter of concern for the entire campus community, not just for the administration. We are therefore requesting that this investigative process be not only thorough but above all, transparent.
