Threat on campus: a study of select Ontario post-secondary threat assessment teams' experience with threat assessment policy

Abstract

In Canada, there has been a total of 12 school shootings across the country over the past 40 years, four of which occurred in higher education; University of Alberta, Dawson College, Concordia University, and L’ecole Polytechnique (The Canadian Press, 2016; Payne, 2006; Rogerson, 2018; Watt, 2017). The safety of students is no longer considered to rest with one area of the campus community, such as campus security, and is instead considered to be a “we responsibility” (Mohandie, 2014, p. 131), involving administrators, parents, peers, and faculty reporting concerning behaviors to the campus team responsible for the evaluation of student dangerousness. These campus teams, commonly referred to as threat assessment teams (Meloy et al., 2014; Sokolow et al., 2016) determine the level of targeted violence risk posed by a student towards self or others (ATAP, 2006; Borum et al., 1999; Meloy et al., 2014). Limited research exists with a focus on how institutional threat assessment policies are developed at the post-secondary level. This study shed light on threat assessment in Canada through the utilization of policy in a uniquely Canadian education system, specifically within the province of Ontario. It is evident that different post-secondary institutions are choosing to support different models of threat assessment management (TAM). These different models included all aspects of violence prevention from team member selection, to policy and procedure development, to the tool used to determine level of risk.